Simulation of a tissue backscatter coefficient measurement experiment using the finite element method

Ultrasound has been shown to be an effective imaging modality for investigating tissue health. For example, the backscatter coefficient (BSC) has been shown to be a biomarker of tumour response to therapy but is limited in its application clinically due to the difficulty of accurately acquiring attenuation and diffraction corrections. To assess the variability in BSC assessment, we present a finite element tool simulating a singleelement planar reflector substitution method estimate of the BSC of a set of simulated phantoms. BSC estimates were computed with errors