Diagnostic ultrasound artifacts during imaging of two-body interfaces: part 2--beam thickness artifact.

A diagnostic ultrasound method is being developed for measuring surface contact areas at the tibio-femoral interface of a total knee replacement in a non-clinical industrial setting as an engineering design tool. As an initial step towards this, a previous study mathematically predicted the effect of ultrasound beam thickness on contact area measurements at a two-body interface. In the current study, a novel metal-on-polymer acoustic test object was constructed to create circular two-body interfaces of known geometry. The object was ultrasonically imaged, contact areas measured, and the results compared with the theoretical model previously developed.