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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Tom Bland, Professor Nick ParkerORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
Medical ultrasound scanners are typically calibrated to a speed of sound corresponding to the soft tissue average of 1540 m s−1. In regions of different sound speed, for example, organs and tumours, the B-mode image becomes geometrically distorted from the true tissue cross-section, due to refraction and the misrepresentation of length. A ray model is developed to predict this distortion for a generalized two-dimensional object with atypical speed of sound, and verified against ultrasound images of a test object. We quantify the areal image distortion as a function of the key dependencies, including the speed of sound mismatch, the scanning format, the object size and its elongation. Our findings show that the distortion of area can be significant, even for relatively small speed of sound mismatches. For example, a 5% speed mismatch typically leads to a 10 – 20% distortion in area. These findings have implications for the accuracy of ultrasound-based evaluation of area and volume.
Author(s): Bland T, Tong J, Ward B, Parker NG
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Journal of Physics Conference Series
Year: 2017
Volume: 797
Pages: 012002
Print publication date: 27/01/2017
Online publication date: 27/01/2017
Acceptance date: 27/01/2017
Date deposited: 27/01/2017
ISSN (print): 1742-6588
ISSN (electronic): 1742-6596
Publisher: Institute of Physics
URL: https://doi.org/10.1088/1742-6596/797/1/012002
DOI: 10.1088/1742-6596/797/1/012002
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