Ultrasound speckle size and lesion signal to noise ratio: verification of theory.

We compare predictions from our published theory of speckle cell size with recently published experimental results and a three dimensional computer simulation for the case of Gaussian pulses from spherically focused transducers in random media. The agreement is very good. We also compare our published theoretical predictions of the signal-to-noise ratio for a circular lesion in a speckle background with published "contrast to speckle ratio" data for anechoic cylindrical lesions in tissue mimicking material. Again, agreement is very good. The verification of these theoretical predictions has important implications for the evaluation of B-scan image quality and the study of tissue characterization.