Medical ultrasound: a new metric of performance for grey-scale imaging

The imaging performance of diagnostic ultrasound scanners is clinically important but difficult to assess objectively. Clinical trials are time consuming and subjective, while measurements made using test objects often have little clinical relevance and limited traceability. This paper describes the concept of a Resolution Integral as a single figure-of-merit for grey-scale ultrasound imaging. The concept is a general one that can be realised by a variety of methods. We describe one possible implementation that employs a novel test object containing 3D anechoic pipe structures embedded in tissue mimicking material.