Detecting kidney stones using twinkling artifacts: Survey of kidney stones with varying composition and size

In recent years, work has been done to understand the mechanisms of Doppler ultrasound twinkling artifacts (TAs) and why they appear over kidney stones. In this work, twinkling artifacts were evaluated as a possible method of locating and characterizing kidney stones. Doppler ultrasound scanning was used to evaluate 47 stones of different types and sizes. An isolated stone study was used to understand the behavior of the TAs while varying transmit voltages. An ex vivo kidney study was conducted to determine if TAs were localized to the stones. An ex vivo randomized stone placement study was used to evaluate the robustness of detecting and locating stones. The TAs were also shown to be isolated to the stone when placed in an ex vivo kidney. The randomized stone placement study showed that this method could find all 47 used stones with only two false positives. A few limitations to this method were found with issues accurately sizing stones as well as difficulties in specificity for characterizing the stones. Further work will be done on these limitations by improving the Doppler acquisition and processing code as well as evaluating the use of TAs in human studies.In recent years, work has been done to understand the mechanisms of Doppler ultrasound twinkling artifacts (TAs) and why they appear over kidney stones. In this work, twinkling artifacts were evaluated as a possible method of locating and characterizing kidney stones. Doppler ultrasound scanning was used to evaluate 47 stones of different types and sizes. An isolated stone study was used to understand the behavior of the TAs while varying transmit voltages. An ex vivo kidney study was conducted to determine if TAs were localized to the stones. An ex vivo randomized stone placement study was used to evaluate the robustness of detecting and locating stones. The TAs were also shown to be isolated to the stone when placed in an ex vivo kidney. The randomized stone placement study showed that this method could find all 47 used stones with only two false positives. A few limitations to this method were found with issues accurately sizing stones as well as difficulties in specificity for characterizing the stone...