A Novel Method for Depicting Thoracic Spine Using Difference between Scattering of Muscle Tissues and Reflection at Bone Surface

During epidural anesthesia, clear visualization of the puncture position of the needle is strongly required. In the present study, we visualized the human thoracic spine using the differences of ultrasonic scattering and reflection properties between muscle tissue and bone, respectively. The amplitude angle characteristics from the target to the probe were compared with the previously acquired scattering and reflection properties for the targets in the water. Then we superimposed the estimation results to the B-mode image. We could almost estimate the bone positions and the inclination angles for the brightness positions.