Improved microcalcification detection in breast ultrasound: Phantom studies

Ultrasound B-scans illustrate microcalcification clusters as bright high contrast spots with the resolution limited by the size of speckle cells. Thus, distinguishing these reflections from speckle noise using ultrasound B-scans is challenging. This work addresses the performance of ultrasound B-scans in detecting microcalcifications first through theoretical prediction. Based on these predictions, a post processing method is proposed to improve the detectability of microcalcifications at the final display stage. This method is applied to lab-generated phantoms to illustrate the improvement in detectability.