Studies on ultrasonic scattering from quasi-periodic structures

This study extends the work done on nonuniform phase statistics by including additional results based on quasi-periodic scattering. Three parameters are used to predict the presence of regular structure within the region of interest. The signal-to-noise ratio of phase and the /spl chi//sup 2/ statistic resulting from conducting a goodness of fit test are two parameters used to verify whether the phase signal followed a uniform distribution. A third parameter, the power spectral density (PSD), was studied and its ability to provide information on the level of periodicity present was analyzed. Computer simulations and experiments on tissue mimicking phantoms were carried out, the results of which indicate that the parameters introduced in this paper have good potential in providing a better understanding of scattering from a collection of quasi-periodic scatterers.