SIMULATION STUDY OF CHANGES IN ULTRASOUND SPECKLE STATISTICS WITH THESYSTEM POINT-SPREAD FUNCTION

The intensity point signal-to-noise ratio, SNR(I), characterizing the ultrasound speckle statistics, depends on the tissue scattering micros tructure and the imaging systems point spread function. Both should be described in three-dimensional space. Therefore, a three-dimensional simulation model is used in this paper to generate a rf signal and stu dy the variations in SNR(I) with the transducer center frequency and b andwidth. Results are in agreement with existing theoretical predictio ns. A possible method to analyze the SNR(I) data is also presented tha t can produce a straight line slope as a feature value that depends on the tissue scattering microstructure only. Such a feature may prove t o be more useful than SNR(I) values in tissue characterization problem s.