OBJECTIVE QUALITY CONTROL PROGRAM FOR MEDICAL ULTRASOUND SCANNING

Ultrasound imaging of a focal lesion of low contrast against background tissue necessitates maximum spatial and contrast sensitivity resulting in non-specular reflection, predisposing these images to degradation due to speckle. In recent years, diagnostic ultrasound image quality has greatly improved due to advances in system hardware and software. Developments in transducer design have resulted in transducers with greater bandwidth and sensitivity. Quality features to be tested are spatial resolution, contrast resolution and lesion signal-to-noise ratio. These features are explained and examples are shown.