• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.751-759
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• 2023

Breast ultrasonography is difficult to image in fatty breasts and to find micro-calcification, but the discovery of micro-calcification is very important for breast cancer screening. Among the color Doppler artifact of ultrasound, twinkle artifact mainly occur on strong reflectors such as stones or calcification in images, and evaluation methods using them are clinically being used. In this study, we are conducting experiments on the color Doppler settings of ultrasound equipment, such as repetition frequency, ensemble, persist, wall filtering, smoothing, linear density, and dissociation value, by producing a breast simulation phantom using the largest amount of calcium phosphate among breast implants. The purpose of this study was to improve the contrast of twinkle artifact in breast ultrasound examinations and to maximize their use in clinical practice. As a result, the pulse repetition frequency occurred in the range of 3.6 kHz to 7.2 kHz, and did not occur above 10.5 kHz. For ensembles, twinkle artifact occurred in all sizes of calcification under low conditions, and in threshold settings, the twinkle artifact increased slightly only under 80 to 100 conditions, and did not occur in 1 mm size calcification. Persist, wall filter, smoothing, and line density settings did not have much meaning in the setting variable because conditions did not increase by condition, and pulse repetition frequency, ensemble, and thresholds had the greatest impact on the twinkling artifact image. This study is expected to help examiners select optimal conditions to effectively increase twinkle artifact by adjusting color Doppler settings.