MO-D-218-02: Ultrasound Phantoms in Image Quality Measurements and Performance Assessment

Medical Physics
Ernest L Madsen

Abstract

Agreement has recently emerged for measurement of only three parameters in routine quality assurance. These include element or channel failure (EOCF), maximum depth of penetration (MDOP) and distance measurement accuracy (DMA). The related study leading to this agreement was done at the Mayo Clinic ["Four-year experience with a clinical ultrasound quality control program," Hangiandreou et al. Ultrasound Med & Biol, vol. 37, pp. 1350-1357 (2011)]. A variety of phantoms have been proposed for performing these measurements. These include: 1) a phantom with both flat and cone-shaped scanning windows, tissue-mimicking material and parallel nylon fibers for measuring all three parameters; 2) a starch suspension in water phantom for assessing ECOF; 3) polyurethane phantom for determining ECOF and estimating MDOP; 4) a silicone phantom for determining ECOF. Determination of ECOF and MDOP requires acquisition of image cine loops including many statistically independent versions; analysis of the data requires averaging of the images in the cine loops, and software is being tested at the time of this writing for user-friendly downloading and averaging of the cine images. The phantoms will be described and examples of procedures and result...Continue Reading

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