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First Time Implementation of a Physics Ultrasound (US) Testing Program: Analysis and New Lessons

K Stiles*, R Makkia, D Vergara, A Dohatcu, Yale New Haven Hospital Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, New Haven, CT

Presentations

(Saturday, 3/26/2022)   [Central Time (GMT-5)]

Purpose: To address an engineer’s complaint of an increase in service requests following a new US quality control (QC) annual physics testing program, compare failure rates against benchmarks and tester performance within the physics group.

Methods: Annual QC tests were: Physical and Mechanical Inspection, Image Uniformity and Artifact Survey, and Scanner’s Electronic Image Display Performance. Per ACR, Image Uniformity assessment of transducers consists of three criteria: “average brightness at the edge of the scan is the same as that in the middle” (A), “there are no vertically or radially oriented shadows from array element dropout” (B), and “there are no brightness transitions between focal zones” (C), graded on a scale from 1-3, meaning pass, conditional passing with requirements, and fail, respectively. The other tests were based on a pass/fail criteria. QC was performed on 105 different units of 4 different manufactures, 11 different models, and a total of 452 transducers.

Results: The failure rate for the Physical and Mechanical Inspection test was 11.4% out of total number of scanners. Over the total number of transducers tested, the failure rate for Image Uniformity/Artifacts for A, B and C was 0.7%, 12.8%, and 0.4%, respectively. 24.8% of units failed at least part of the Scanner’s Electronic Image Display Performance test. It was found that less experienced physicists were more likely to fail their units, while more experienced physicists were more likely to conditionally pass tests. In reference to literature for uniformity testing (14%-40% failure rate), our units showed comparable results.

Conclusion: The review of a new US QC annual physics testing program at our institution was performed. The engineer’s complaint was investigated, and our failure rates were found to be on the lower end compared to literature. Tester bias, after initial undertaking of QC responsibility, was observed and needs further investigation.

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Keywords

Quality Control, Performance Tests, Data Acquisition

Taxonomy

IM- Ultrasound : Quality Control and Image Quality Assessment

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