Evidence for trapped surface bubbles as the cause for the twinkling artifact in ultrasound imaging

摘要

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 quantitatively define the TA, beamforming and Doppler processing were performed on raw per-channel radio-frequency (RF) data collected when imaging human kidney stones in vitro. Suppression of twinkling by an ensemble of computer generated replicas of a single RF received 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. Its suppression by elevated static pressure and return when the pressure was released suggest the presence of bubbles on the stone surface is the mechanism that gives rise to the TA.