Interlaboratory comparison of ultrasonic backscatter, attenuation, and speed measurements.

TLDR

Ten independent laboratories measured propagation speed, attenuation, and backscatter in identical tissue‑mimicking samples to compare ultrasonic property results. Attenuation measurements agreed reasonably well, whereas propagation speed and backscatter showed poor agreement, with some sites differing by up to an order of magnitude, underscoring the study’s value for quantitative ultrasound labs.

Abstract

In a study involving 10 different sites, independent results of measurements of ultrasonic properties on equivalent tissue-mimicking samples are reported and compared. The properties measured were propagation speed, attenuation coefficients, and backscatter coefficients. Reasonably good agreement exists for attenuation coefficients, but less satisfactory results were found for propagation speeds. As anticipated, agreement was not impressive in the case of backscatter coefficients. Results for four sites agreed rather well in both absolute values and frequency dependence, and results from other sites were lower by as much as an order of magnitude. The study is valuable for laboratories doing quantitative studies.