Ultrasound artifacts: classification, applied physics with illustrations, and imaging appearances.

Ultrasound has become a widely used diagnostic imaging modality in medicine because of its safety and portability. Because of rapid advances in technology, in recent years, sonographic imaging quality has significantly increased. Despite these advances, the potential to encounter artifacts while imaging remains.This article classifies both common and uncommon gray-scale and Doppler ultrasound artifacts into those resulting from physiology and those caused by hardware. A brief applied-physics explanation for each artifact is listed along with an illustrated diagram. The imaging appearance of artifacts is presented in case examples, along with strategies to minimize the artifacts in real time or use them for clinical advantage where applicable.