OBJECTIVE ANALYSIS OF ULTRASOUND IMAGES BY USE OF A COMPUTATIONAL OBSERVER

We present a computer-based Computational Observer method for the analysis and evaluation of digitized ultrasound images of the Contrast-Detail phantom, which was developed earlier. This evaluation method evolved from image evaluation studies, which demonstrated that human observer performance is, not sufficiently consistent or accurate for objective evaluation of images or imaging SyStems. The Computational Observer measures the detection threshold for imaged targets of known contrast, and computes Contrast-Detail data from this information. We compare the results of Computational Observer image evaluations to those of human observers for the same set of digitized ultrasound images, and for similar tasks. We find that our new method meets the criteria of being objective, accurate, reproducible, transportable, and relevant to human observer image evaluations.