Repeatability and Reproducibility of Quantitative Ultrasound Parameter Estimation Using Spatially Weighted Total Variation (SWTV) Regularization

The objective of this study is to evaluate the repeatability and reproducibility of quantitative ultrasound (QUS) parameters obtained using the spatially weighted total variation (SWTV) method. A well-characterized phantom was scanned multiple times with different measurement conditions. From the acquired data, two QUS parameters, attenuation coefficient estimate (ACE) and backscatter coefficient (BSC) were computed using the SWTV method and the reference phantom method (RPM). The SWTV method achieves lower intra- and inter-class variability compared to the RPM for all QUS parameters, exhibiting superior repeatability and reproducibility of the SWTV method.