The impact of various imaging parameters on ultrasonic displacement and velocity estimates

The accuracy of displacement and velocity data in ultrasonic motion detection systems depends on a combination of ultrasonic imaging parameters. These include magnitude and direction of target motion, target region dimensions, scattering media, ultrasonic frequency of interrogation, digital sampling frequency, and signal type (envelope detected or RF). Because the impact of scattering media in particular has heretofore received little or no attention, we provide experimental results and computer analysis to evaluate the influence of different scattering media on the accuracy of ultrasonic displacement and velocity estimates using porcine liver, porcine muscle, and woolen sea sponge samples. Our experimental results show that for identical target dimensions and displacements, the accuracy of ultrasonic displacement and velocity estimates in porcine muscle samples are substantially higher than in porcine liver samples. Analysis of experimentally derived autocovariance curves for each tissue type indicates that the improvement in accuracy for muscle samples is not, in fact, due to differences in the speckle characteristics for each tissue type. The improvement is attributed to the presence of well-defined and resolvable image structures from muscle and the lack of such resolvable structures in porcine liver tissue. We provide a summary of the factors impacting ultrasonic displacement and velocity measurements, and discuss why and how a combination of one or more imaging parameters affects these measurements.<>