Which artifact is the product of horizontal enhancement or banding at focal zones due to improper brightness?

Which artifact is the product of horizontal enhancement or banding at focal zones due to improper brightness?

• A. Focal Banding
• B. Comet Tail
• C. Ring Down
• D. Propagation Speed Error

Answer: (A)

Focal banding is a brightness-related artifact that shows up as horizontal bands at the depths where the beam is most focused. When brightness or gain isn’t set properly, the focal zone can become over-enhanced, producing these band-like bright lines across the image. The fix is to normalize brightness across depths by adjusting overall gain and the time-gain compensation (TGC) so the brightness is even from near to far field. This isn’t caused by reverberation artifacts like comet tail or ring down, and it isn’t due to inaccuracies in assumed propagation speed. Those issues create different patterns (reverberation lines or depth misplacement), whereas focal banding specifically stems from improper brightness at the focal zones.

Focal banding is a brightness-related artifact that shows up as horizontal bands at the depths where the beam is most focused. When brightness or gain isn’t set properly, the focal zone can become over-enhanced, producing these band-like bright lines across the image. The fix is to normalize brightness across depths by adjusting overall gain and the time-gain compensation (TGC) so the brightness is even from near to far field.

This isn’t caused by reverberation artifacts like comet tail or ring down, and it isn’t due to inaccuracies in assumed propagation speed. Those issues create different patterns (reverberation lines or depth misplacement), whereas focal banding specifically stems from improper brightness at the focal zones.