Abstract: A breast scanning system configured to scan a breast of a patient includes a table configured to receive the patient thereon. The table has an aperture formed therein configured to receive the breast of the patient pendant therethrough and positionable over and into a bath configured to contain a medium. An armature is movably disposable in the bath. The armature carries transducer arrays that are disposable in the bath, and configured to transmit and receive acoustic and/or ultrasound signals. A manual control is operatively coupled to the armature to manually move the armature and thus the transducer arrays within the bath.

Abstract: Methods for imaging the internal structures of an object using an acoustic wave field are provided. In one aspect, for example, a method of imaging internals of a physical object using acoustic waves may include transmitting an acoustic wave field toward the object, receiving a resultant acoustic wave field with a receiver, where the resultant acoustic wave field is in response to the transmitted acoustic wave field reflected from or transmitted through the object, and determining a predicted resultant acoustic wave field derived from a model of the object. The method may also include determining a residual between the predicted resultant acoustic wave field and the resultant acoustic wave field, and back propagating the residual to determine corrections to the model of the object. In another aspect, the above recited steps may be further iterated to successively refine the model of the object over a number of iterations until a predefined condition is reached.