Document Type

Article

Publication Date

4-8-2011

Journal or Book Title

Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

Volume

129

Issue

4

First Page

2316

Last Page

2324

DOI

10.1121/1.3559677

Abstract

Accurate characterization of tissue pathologies using ultrasonic attenuation is strongly dependent on the accuracy of the algorithm that is used to obtain the attenuation coefficient estimates. In this paper, computer simulations were used to compare the accuracy and the precision of the three methods that are commonly used to estimate the local ultrasonic attenuation within a region of interest (ROI) in tissue; namely, the spectral log difference method, the spectral difference method, and the hybrid method. The effects of the inhomgeneities within the ROI on the accuracy of the three algorithms were studied, and the optimal ROI size (the number of independent echoes laterally and the number of pulse lengths axially) was quantified for each method. The three algorithms were tested for when the ROI was homogeneous, the ROI had variations in scatterernumber density, and the ROI had variations in effective scatterer size. The results showed that when the ROI was homogeneous, the spectral difference method had the highest accuracy and precision followed by the spectral log difference method and the hybrid method, respectively. Also, when the scatterernumber density varied, the spectral difference method completely failed, while the log difference method and hybrid method still gave good results. Lastly, when the scatterer size varied, all of the methods failed.

Comments

This article is from Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 129 (2011): 2316–2324, doi:10.1121/1.3559677. Posted with permission.

Copyright Owner

Acoustical Society of America

Language

en

File Format

application/pdf

Download

Included in

Biomedical Commons

Share

COinS