An artifactual grayscale, color flow, or Doppler signal appearing on the opposite side of a strong reflector is called what?

An artifactual grayscale, color flow, or Doppler signal appearing on the opposite side of a strong reflector is called what?

• A. Mirror image
• B. Shadow
• C. Reverberation
• D. Clutter

Answer: (A)

Mirror-image artifact happens when a strong, bright reflector acts like a second surface that creates a ghost image of a structure or of flow on the opposite side. The ultrasound wave hits the reflector, part of the sound is redirected toward another area and then returns, making the system reconstruct a duplicate image across the reflector. This can show up in grayscale, color flow, or Doppler signals as if there’s real anatomy or flow on the mirrored side, often with similar brightness and shape to the true structure. This differs from shadows, which are dark regions behind an object that attenuates the beam; from reverberation, which produces multiple, equally spaced echoes because the sound bounces between two surfaces; and from clutter, which is stray, nonanatomic signal that looks like noise rather than a true mirrored anatomy.

Mirror-image artifact happens when a strong, bright reflector acts like a second surface that creates a ghost image of a structure or of flow on the opposite side. The ultrasound wave hits the reflector, part of the sound is redirected toward another area and then returns, making the system reconstruct a duplicate image across the reflector. This can show up in grayscale, color flow, or Doppler signals as if there’s real anatomy or flow on the mirrored side, often with similar brightness and shape to the true structure.

This differs from shadows, which are dark regions behind an object that attenuates the beam; from reverberation, which produces multiple, equally spaced echoes because the sound bounces between two surfaces; and from clutter, which is stray, nonanatomic signal that looks like noise rather than a true mirrored anatomy.