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17 Jun 2002
Two University of Rochester researchers have invented a new "phantom" for quicker, more accurate testing and standardization of ultrasound scanners. The new phantom is a digitally encoded plastic transparency that researchers believe is more accurate, works more quickly, and is less expensive to produce than today's phantoms, which are cumbersome hand-built, blocks of various tissue-mimicking materials.
The phantom was crated by graduate student Dan Phillips and Kevin Parker, professor of electrical engineering and radiology and director of the Rochester center for Ultrasound.
Millions of ultrasound scans are performed each year to trace the progress of fetal development and conditions like heart disease and cancer. Scanners send sound waves into a material and then measure the waves reflected by solid objects within the material. Phillips and Parker discovered that particles just a few thousands of a millimeter in width can effectively reflect sound waves. Realizing they could take a super-accurate ultrasound scan of precisely positioned, digitally created patterns of dots and lines, the researchers created a digital halftone pattern, which they then transferred to an ordinary transparency.
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