A study was undertaken to evaluate the limitations of abdominal sonography in a group of predominantly elderly patients. In the majority of patients (98%) sonography, using 3.5 MHz and 5 MHz array transducers permitted visualization of the major abdominal organs with image quality sufficient for definitive diagnosis, but improved image quality would be desirable in 78% of this sample. Obesity and immobilization were associated with poor sonographic image quality. In 31 of the 45 (69%) poor image quality studies, no near-field artifacts (less than 3 cm depth) were observed. Obstacles in the acoustic path were noted in 77% of the poor image quality studies.

This paper presents a novel technique for creating images of local tissue attenuation. The original conventional B scan is traversed, one pixel at a time. In the vicinity of each pixel, a uniform area is determined and average attenuation is computed utilizing an extended modified Prony approach. B scans of tissue mimicking phantoms and in vivo human liver scans are used in order to illustrate the performance of the proposed algorithm. The results show good agreement between estimated and known attenuation values. Clinical studies demonstrate significant potential of the proposed technique, in particular for diagnosis of diffuse liver disease.

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