Quantitative ultrasound analysis for rib bones

Breast cancer is one of the most common cancers among women. Radiotherapy can cause damage to rib bones, increasing the risk of rib bone fractures. By improving the accessibility of rib monitoring, treatment plans could be adjusted to reduce these side effects. Quantitative ultrasound analysis, which has proven effective in detecting osteoporosis, is being explored as a potential tool for assessing rib bone health. The study consists of two parts: first, a simulation model of rib alterations was developed to train a regression model for predicting bone volume fraction (BV/TV) using ultrasound backscatter parameters. In the second part, small-scale in-vivo measurements were performed on healthy volunteers to compare the backscatter parameters from the in-silico and in-vivo analyses. The model demonstrated a statistically significant correlation between BV/TV and backscatter analysis, with similar distributions observed between the in-silico and in-vivo backscatter parameters. However, the regression model's ability to predict BV/TV was less accurate for rib bones with the highest degree of erosion.