Bioacoustics response of small benign or malignant nodules

Abstract

One of the most important features of separation between benign or malignant tissues is their smooth or rough shape. This article presents a new method for early diagnosis of thyroid cancer by knowing the resonance frequencies of a certain tissue. Two types of nodules were investigated: spherical and elliptical. Their external surfaces were smooth or rough with different values of spicules. Propagation of sound through the human body was modeled by a classical partial differential equation associated with Neumann or Dirichlet boundary conditions. The assessments of about ten acoustic eigenfrequencies are enough to decide the type of external surfaces: smooth or rough, or whether nodule is benign or malignant. Data obtained by this method refers to the result of investigating 3D bodies smaller than 5 mm, when other medical devices such as ultrasound or CT cannot evaluate their surface shape because of their limited spatial resolution.