The analysis of in-air reverberation patterns from medical ultrasound transducers

National guidelines for routine ultrasound quality assurance include the measurement of transducer sensitivity using the in-air reverberation pattern generated from a transducer operating in air. The in-air reverberation method has been compared with other well-known measures of transducer sensitivity, such as the Sonora FirstCall probe tester (Sonora Medical Systems Inc, Longmont, CO, USA) and phantom-based images. There is good agreement between the in-air reverberation images and the Sonora FirstCall probe data for individual crystal sensitivity. However, the in-air reverberation approach is cheaper and easier to implement for linear and curvilinear transducers. The methods used for measuring the in-air reverberation pattern and the influence of scanner parameters such as gain and output power have been investigated. In general, reliance on a visual assessment of reverberation depth can lead to inconsistencies in the measurement of reverberation depth, when taken over a period of several months. The value of scanner parameters, in particular scanner gain, is also important when trying to measure changes in reverberation depth due to changes in transducer performance. A more accurate assessment of changes in transducer sensitivity, using the in-air reverberation method, is found by measuring the peak pixel grey scale values within a chosen reverberation band in the image. This quantitative approach can be taken a step further by assessing changes within the whole in-air reverberation pattern, by applying a two-dimensional cross correlation between two reverberation images to assess changes in transducer performance.