Purpose
To assess the effects of probe load and speed on thyroid ultrasonography, an apparatus was designed to capture ultrasound images of a thyroid phantom under various ultrasound probe loads and speeds.
Methods
We developed an automatic ultrasound scanning system for the thyroid gland, and captured ultrasound images of a thyroid phantom. The ultrasound probe load was divided into 7 steps between 0.1 N and 5.5 N, and the ultrasound probe speed was set at 6 steps, from 4 mm/s to 24 mm/s increasing in 4 mm/s increments. These images were analyzed for sharpness using the Quick MTF, commercial software, and average modulation transfer function 50 (MTF50) value was evaluated at 4 regions of interest (ROI) of the hypoechoic mass. In addition, the Peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) was evaluated primarily to evaluate the information loss of the image. The PSNR calculation was performed using the MATLAB.
Results
Our results showed that ultrasound images were sharpest at a load of 0.2 N, and that there were no differences in image sharpness among the various ultrasound probe speeds of 4 mm/s to 24 mm/s. These results can be applied to develop more sophisticated devices or robots for an automatic ultrasound scanning system.
Conclusions
These results can be applied to develop more sophisticated devices or robots for an automatic ultrasound scanning system.