Background:The level of cervical cancer screening in underdeveloped countries is far behind that of developed countries mostly because current cervical cancer screening methods are difficult to implement in underdeveloped countries. The use of non-invasive, repeatable, and low-cost ultrasound needs to be accessed. Methods: The Canadian Sonix TOUCH ultrasound system and transvaginal ultrasound probe were used to record ultrasound radio frequency (RF) signals from cervical tissues of 69 patients with cervical cancer and 37 healthy women. The self-compiled RF time series signal analysis software was used to extract 3 different dimensions of parameters of the region of interest (ROI), including time domain, frequency domain, and fractal dimension (FD). Fourteen spectrum characteristic parameters were extracted, of which structure function method FD (SFD) and Higuchi FD belonged to FD parameters; slope, intercept, midbandfit, S1, S2, S3, and S4 were frequency domain parameters; and fuzzy entropy, kurtosis, peak, cross zero count, and cross zero standard deviation (Std) were time domain parameters.
Results:The average values of the five time-domain characteristic parameters of cervical cancer tissues were smaller than those of normal cervical tissues (fuzzy entropy: 1.70±0.29 vs. 1.83±0.20; kurtosis: 0.347±0.03 vs. 0.350±0.02; peak: 1989.9±166.8 vs. 2024.69±187.5; cross zero count: 3.77±0.31 vs. 3.81±0.29; cross zero Std: 1.26±0.17 vs. 1.33±0.14), although the differences were not statistically significant (P = 0.130, 0.326, 0.618, 0.442, and 0.204, respectively). The average values of the two FD characteristic parameters and the seven frequency domain characteristic parameters of cervical cancer tissues were larger than those of normal tissues (SFD: 1.84±0.28 vs. 1.46±0.39; Higuchi FD: 1.71±0.30 vs. 1.28±0.30;