Ultrasound attenuation imaging using compound acquisition and processing

A method that combines both spatial and frequency compounding is described for measuring attenuation in tissue. The technique applies a reference phantom to account for imaging system dependencies of echo signals. Emphasis is given to local attenuation estimates, to reduce the variance of the attenuation measurements over small regions of interest (ROI) and to enable coarse attenuation imaging. Experiments using a uniform phantom show that the standard deviation of local attenuation estimates within a ROI drops when greater degrees of compounding are applied. Attenuation images of a specially designed phantom containing inclusions with attenuation contrast illustrate the accuracy and precision of the technique.