Signal Processing of Broadband Pulsed Ultrasound: Measurement of Attenuation of Soft Biological Tissues

In this paper we will discuss the measurement of attenuation of soft tissues using broadband pulsed ultrasound. While all the methods presented here may be used for measuring the attenuation coefficient of single layers, some of the methods can also be used for measuring integrated attenuation of composite layers of soft tissue. These latter methods do not require knowledge of reflection coefficients at tissue interfaces and are well suited to generating projection data for computerized attenuation tomography of soft tissues.