Ultrasound imaging artifacts: How to recognize them and how to avoid them

Abstract

Echocardiography has become a critical tool in clinical cardiology in evaluating cardiac physiology and diagnosing cardiac disease states. However, imaging artifacts are commonly encountered and often lead to misdiagnoses of life-threatening diseases, such as aortic dissection and ventricular thrombus. It is, thus, critical for clinicians to understand these artifacts to avoid these misdiagnoses and protect patients from undue intervention. Artifacts can be broken down into two categories: those from violation of ultrasound system assumptions and those from interference by external equipment and devices. This review article discusses the most commonly encountered artifacts by category, explains their physical mechanisms, elaborates on their most common presentations, and instructs clinicians on how to avoid their misinterpretation.

A Double-Envelope Mitral Inflow Spectral Doppler Profile After MitraClip

“…5 Some authors have raised the hypothesis that the outer envelope of the CWD curve is the result of reverberations of highintensity Doppler signals against the wall of the left atrium related to a high-intensity backscatter phenomenon (left atrium wall acting as a parallel reflector). 8,17 As a thought experiment, suppose that the double envelope can be explained as a reverberation Doppler artifact. In such a case, a double signal also should be seen after moving the Doppler beam direction medially since the authors are interrogating a larger flow field with a stronger Doppler signal.…”

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“…Artifacts arise due to the physical properties of ultrasound. They are commonly encountered in daily routine echocardiographic examinations and are sometimes misdiagnosed as pathologic structures [5] , [6] .…”

Good and bad boundaries in ultrasound compounding: preserving anatomic boundaries while suppressing artifacts

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