Gary Allen Schwartz

Artifact reduction in medical ultrasound

Interpretation of medical ultrasound images is confounded by the presence of significant acoustic imaging artifacts. These artifacts result from diffraction, propagation, and scattering effects and regional variations in these effects. Commercial diagnostic imaging systems have taken various design approaches to mitigate the artifacts. Anatomic features widely vary in size relative to the imaging wavelengths, resulting in angular scattering variations and speckle‐limited resolution. Tissue attenuation varies greatly resulting in shadowing and enhancement. This review will look at the origins of certain acoustic imaging artifacts and discuss methods that have been applied to address their contribution to image quality. Included in the discussion will be acoustic methods (such as spatial compounding), and signal processing methods (such as attenuation compensation and frequency compounding). Design approaches and clinical image examples will be presented.