SIMULATION STUDY OF CHANGES IN ULTRASOUND SPECKLE STATISTICS WITH THE SYSTEM POINT-SPREAD FUNCTION

The intensity point signal-to-noise ratio, SNR(I), characterizing the ultrasound speckle statistics, depends on the tissue scattering microstructure and the imaging systems point spread function. Both should be described in three-dimensional space. Therefore, a three-dimensional simulation model is used in this paper to generate a rf signal and study the variations in SNR(I) with the transducer center frequency and bandwidth. Results are in agreement with existing theoretical predictions. A possible method to analyze the SNR(I) data is also presented that can produce a straight line slope as a feature value that depends on the tissue scattering microstructure only. Such a feature may prove to be more useful than SNR(I) values in tissue characterization problems.