The leicester Doppler phantom--a digital electronic phantom for ultrasound pulsed Doppler system testing

Doppler flow and string phantoms have been used to assess the performance of ultrasound Doppler systems in terms of parameters such as sensitivity, velocity accuracy and sample volume registration. However, because of the nature of their construction, they cannot challenge the accuracy and repeatability of modern digital ultrasound systems or give objective measures of system performance. Electronic Doppler phantoms are able to make use of electronically generated test signals, which may be controlled precisely in terms of frequency, amplitude and timing. The Leicester Electronic Doppler Phantom uses modern digital signal processing methods and field programmable gate array technology to overcome some of the limitations of previously described electronic phantoms. In its present form, it is able to give quantitative graphical assessments of frequency response and range gate characteristics, as well as measures of dynamic range and velocity measurement accuracy. The use of direct acoustic coupling eliminates uncertainties caused by Doppler beam effects, such as intrinsic spectral broadening, but prevents their evaluation.