Ultrasonic beamwidth effect on evaluation of attenuation by sampling medical B-mode imaging data

We have proposed a technique to measure the ultrasonic attenuation of the scattering medium such as human liver by processing the data sampled from its linear-scanned B-mode images. Generally, shorter lateral sampling interval improve the accuracy, but too short sampling interval makes no difference due to beamwidth. Therefore, we consider the efficient lateral data sampling to minimize the number of data for reliable results in measurement area. In this paper, we present the results of the investigation on the approprite lateral sampling interval. Our experiments implied that the approprite sampling interval was the half of the -3dB beamwidth.