Frequency independent ultrasound contrast-detail analysis.

An ultrasound contrast-detail phantom has been developed to evaluate the image quality of diagnostic ultrasound imaging systems. The phantom includes eight conical targets whose B-mode images show disk lesions such that the object contrast of each lesion relative to background is independent of the imaging device or transducer frequency/spectrum. By maintaining conditions for Rayleigh scattering and Rayleigh speckle statistics in the phantom gel, the object contrast of each lesion depends only on the scatterer concentration in the lesion relative to the scatterer concentration in the background. Experimental data confirmed this frequency independence. Results of contrast-detail performance of an ultrasound imaging system are shown, and a standard technique for error analysis of contrast-detail data is described.