Patent ID: 8047990

Claim:
A system for measuring collagen structural changes responsive to collagen treatment, comprising: an imaging unit for sending into and receiving acoustic signals from collagen containing tissue of interest; a computer based data analysis system having stored data relating ultrasound tissue thermal dose to histological changes in collagen structure for correlating a thermal dose applied to the tissue of interest to a change in collagen in the tissue undergoing structural changes arising from the collagen treatment computer software stored in the computer based system configured to process and output the received acoustic signal to the data analysis system to generate an acoustic grayscale differential signal to provide a correlation function which is thereby descriptive of structure of the collagen in the tissue, the system not requiring or including a temperature probe, for the collagen being treated; the imaging unit and data analysis system for processing via the computer software to further provide a grayscale differential signal characteristic of a baseline image area from the collagen containing tissue before being treated, the system thereby configured to define changes in the image area over that present prior to initiation of the collagen treatment; and the data analysis system and imaging unit further configured to use the changes in the acoustic grayscale differential signal from the collagen containing tissue to provide a qualitative metric of collagen shrinkage in the collagen containing tissue, thereby being able to determine the effect of the collagen treatment on the collagen containing tissue.