Quantification in diagnostic ultrasound

Ultrasound imaging systems are widely used to make measurements in organs and tissues for the purposes of diagnosis and to help choose the appropriate therapy. It may come as a surprise to many, including clinical practitioners, that measurements may have substantial error and so all measurements require extensive checking and quantification of errors using experimental flow systems called ‘phantoms’. This talk will describe research on the construction and use of phantoms, both experimental and in-silico where the error checking is performed by simulating the entire ultrasound imaging process.

There is also the possibility of refining the ultrasound techniques, or developing new techniques, to improve measurement accuracy. Peter Hoskins will describe research whose aim is to provide improved velocity measurement; using ultrasound-only techniques and using Computational Fluid Dynamics, first developed for the aerospace industry. Finally recent opportunities for improved quantification will be described in preclinical  and point of care applications.