A Comparative Study on Depth of Penetration Measurements in Diagnostic Ultrasounds Through the Adaptive SNR Threshold Method

Abstract

Depth Of Penetration (DOP) has been investigated in the scientific literature as an informative parameter able to monitor over time both the sensitivity and the general performance of ultrasound (US) diagnostic systems. In common practice, this parameter may suffer from operator-related errors due to its visual assessment. Different image analysis algorithms have been proposed in the literature to address this issue. In this regard, the present work evaluates the Adaptive SNR Threshold Method (AdSTM) on six US diagnostic systems equipped with three US probe models, operating at four frequencies. Data were collected from a US phantom with two distinct zones with different attenuation coefficients. The AdSTM results were compared to the outcomes provided by the Naked Eye Method (NEM), which was performed by 5 non-medical observers. Despite the small population sample of observers, the obtained results were generally consistent across methods, and suggest the implementation of a calibration procedure for AdSTM, and a more extensive testing.

A Novel Equivalent Time Sampling-Based Method for Pulse Transit Time Estimation with Applications into the Cardiovascular Disease Diagnosis

“…In this case, data validation was carried out through the comparison with the nominal flow velocities. As already adopted in [44], compatibility is guaranteed if the following inequality is satisfied [45]:…”

“…In recent literature, Monte Carlo Simulation (MCS) has been extensively used for the uncertainty evaluation of measurements carried out through software-based methods [38,41,44,46]. Two different MCS series were carried out for the uncertainty evaluation related to the estimation of FAV and PWV on the Doppler phantom and the arterial simulator, respectively.…”