Simulation study of changes in ultrasound speckle statistics with the system point spread function

The intensity point signal-to-noise ratio, SNRI, characterizing the ultrasound speckle statistics, depends on the tissue scattering microstructure 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 study the variations in SNRI with the transducer center frequency and bandwidth. Results are in agreement with existing theoretical predictions. A possible method to analyze the SNRI data is also presented that can produce a straight line slope as a feature value that depends on the tissue scattering microstructure only. Such a feature may prove to be more useful than SNRI values in tissue characterization problems.