Artifacts in diagnostic ultrasound

Abstract

Ultrasound artifacts are encountered daily in clinical practice and may be a source of confusion on interpretation. Some artifacts arise secondary to improper scanning techniques and may be avoidable. Other artifacts are generated by the physical limitations of the technique. Recognition of artifacts is important, as they may be clues to tissue composition and aid in diagnosis. The ability to recognize and correct potential ultrasound artifacts is important for image-quality improvement and optimal patient care. In this article, we review common ultrasound artifacts that occur in B mode, spectral and color Doppler, and elastography.

Emphysematous Pyelonephritis Presenting as Pneumaturia and the Use of Point-of-Care Ultrasound in the Emergency Department

“…In contrast, dirty shadowing has a distinct appearance with irregular borders because of a tissue–gas interface formed within the body. Since there is a large acoustic impedance difference between the tissue and gas it mostly reflects rather than absorbs ultrasound waves, therefore, a tissue–gas interface creates an irregular hyper-echoic image with reverberation artifacts that form deep to the interface [12]. A nonpathologic example of dirty shadowing is a normal gas filled bowel (Figure 5).…”

“…The tissue–gas interface creates one highly reflective surface and in the presence of a second highly reflective parallel surface, the echoes generated from a primary ultrasound beam may be repeatedly reflected back and forth before returning to the transducer for detection. These repetitive, regularly spaced artifactual horizontal stripes that appear deep in an air-filled structure are a form of reverberation artifacts called a-lines [12]. A good nonpathologic example of a-lines is in normal lung [11].…”

“…To summarize, both clean and dirty shadowing artifacts are due to attenuation of sound. The difference is, clean shadowing is due to the interface of a substance such as tissue and a strongly absorbing material such as bone or calcified stone while dirty shadowing is due to a high degree of reflection at a gas–tissue interface [12].…”

Development and Evaluation of a Landmark‐Based Method to Estimate Displacements and Strains in Soft Tissues Imaged During an Impact Using Ultrafast Ultrasound

“…In image processing, ultrasound images present many issues because of artefacts (e.g. reverberations, shadowing) and a high level of noise (speckle) . Many methods have been developed in order to mitigate them, but they seem mostly used to improve the effectiveness of medical diagnosis .…”

Ultrasound Image Despeckling/Denoising Based on a Novel Multi-transducer Architecture

“…In addition to the previously mentioned problems, typical ultrasound images suffer from a wide range of artifacts such as, signals produced from grating lobes, high and low attenuation artifacts and reverberation (equally spaced structures in the final image deriving from the same reflector) [15] [16]. Advances in transducer technology tries to depress grating lobes energy compared to the main lobe energy.…”