Two phantoms have been constructed for assessing the performance of high frequency ultrasound imagers. They also allow for periodic quality assurance tests. The phantoms contain eight blocks of tissue-mimicking material where each block contains a spatially random distribution of suitably small anechoic spheres having a small distribution of diameters. The eight mean sphere diameters are distributed from 0.10 to 1.09 mm. The two phantoms differ primarily in terms of the backscatter coefficient of the background material in which the spheres are suspended. The mean scatterer diameter for one phantom is larger than that for the other phantom resulting in a lesser increase in backscatter coefficient for the second phantom; however, the backscatter curves cross at about 35 MHz. Since spheres have no preferred orientation, all three (spatial) dimensions of resolution contribute to sphere detection on an equal basis; thus, the resolution is termed 3-D. Two high frequency scanners are compared. One employs single-element (fixed focus) transducers, and the other employs variable focus linear arrays. The nominal frequency for the single element transducers were 25 and 55 MHz and for the linear array transducers were 20, 30 and 40 MHz. The depth range for detection of spheres of each size is determined corresponding to determination of 3-D resolution as a function of depth. As expected, the single-element transducers are severely limited in useful imaging depth ranges compared with the linear arrays. Note that these phantoms could also be useful for training technicians in using higher frequency scanners.
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