title: Evidence for trapped surface bubbles as the cause for the twinkling artifact in ultrasound imaging.
abstract: The mechanism of the twinkling artifact (TA) that occurs during Doppler ultrasound imaging of kidney stones was investigated. The TA expresses itself in Doppler images as time-varying color. To define the TA quantitatively, beam-forming and Doppler processing were performed on raw per channel radio-frequency data collected when imaging human kidney stones in vitro. Suppression of twinkling by an ensemble of computer-generated replicas of a single radio frequency signal demonstrated that the TA arises from variability among the acoustic signals and not from electronic signal capture or processing. This variability was found to be random, and its suppression by elevated static pressure and return when the pressure was released suggest that the presence of bubbles on the stone surface is the mechanism that gives rise to the TA.
authors.affiliation: Center for Industrial and Medical Ultrasound, Applied Physics Laboratory, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98105, USA.
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.forename: Oleg A
authors.initials: OA
authors.lastname: Sapozhnikov
authors.forename: Michael R
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Bailey
authors.forename: Peter J
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: Kaczkowski
authors.forename: Lawrence A
authors.initials: LA
authors.lastname: Crum
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D016477:Artifacts; D006801:Humans; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000379:methods*; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D007669:Kidney Calculi / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D019047:Phantoms, Imaging; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D013499:Surface Properties; D018615:Ultrasonography, Doppler, Color / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*
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