Application of Ultrasonic Waves in Detection of a Circulating Tumor Cell (CTC) in the Blood

The real, inexpensive, and long-term solution to cancer is prevention, but for people who have currently developed cancer, early diagnosis is of undeniable significance. Circulating tumour cells (CTCs) in the blood are among the earliest signs of cancer initiation or its metastasis; therefore, their detection can be a boon to the medical society and the patients in terms of treatment ease and survival. This study focuses on the use of ultrasonic waves and compressive sensing to detect CTCs in a random distribution of red blood cells (RBCs) in the plasma. This preliminary effort is made to identify the challenges of detecting CTCs in circulating blood. The results show that identification of CTCs is successful given accurate data of total and background pressure fields in the imaging domain and at the receivers. But, in the absence of accurate background data at the location of the receivers, the image is lost. The probable rea-sons for such an observation are discussed and a potential solution is suggested for future re-search to address this problem.

Keywords:

ultrasound , circulating-tumour-cell , cancer , compressive imaging.