Defining Robust Ultrasound Quality Metrics via an Ultrasound Foundation Model
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arXiv
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| Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , |
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| Formato: | Preprint |
| Publicado: |
2026
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| Materias: | |
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| _version_ | 1866918516048789504 |
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| author | Huang, Ziyang Li, Bingyan Ma, Chen Liu, Tianyi Zhai, Yihui Xu, Hong Guo, Yi Li, Zeju Wang, Yuanyuan |
| author_facet | Huang, Ziyang Li, Bingyan Ma, Chen Liu, Tianyi Zhai, Yihui Xu, Hong Guo, Yi Li, Zeju Wang, Yuanyuan |
| contents | Clinicians lack a principled framework to quantify diagnostic utility in ultrasound reconstructions. Existing standards like PSNR and VGG-LPIPS are inadequate, failing to account for modality-specific physics or the structural nuances of acoustic imaging. We close this gap with a TinyUSFM-based evaluation framework featuring two distinct metrics: TinyUSFM-uLPIPS, a full-reference perceptual distance based on multi-layer token relations, and TinyUSFM-NRQ, a deployable no-reference quality score utilizing clean-manifold modeling and worst-region aggregation to detect localized harmful artifacts. We demonstrate that the presented metrics have four unique advantages: 1) Task-linked quality, where TinyUSFM-uLPIPS achieves superior calibration with semantic task damage, accurately reflecting Dice-score drops in segmentation where VGG-based metrics fail; 2) Cross-organ comparability, maintaining stable scoring scales and consistent severity rankings across diverse anatomical sites and domain-shifted data; 3) PSNR-consistent sensitivity, with TinyUSFM-NRQ providing a reliable quality score without ground-truth images that remains consistent with traditional fidelity benchmarks (i.e. PSNR); and 4) Clinical utility, improving the prediction of expert preference from 47.2$\%$ to 72.8$\%$ accuracy and producing super-resolution reconstructions preferred by sonographers. By integrating these advantages into a unified assessment and optimization loop, this work establishes a modality-aligned standard that finally bridges the gap between algorithmic performance and diagnostic utility. Our code is available at https://github.com/sextant-fable/US-Metrics. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_19512 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Defining Robust Ultrasound Quality Metrics via an Ultrasound Foundation Model Huang, Ziyang Li, Bingyan Ma, Chen Liu, Tianyi Zhai, Yihui Xu, Hong Guo, Yi Li, Zeju Wang, Yuanyuan Image and Video Processing Clinicians lack a principled framework to quantify diagnostic utility in ultrasound reconstructions. Existing standards like PSNR and VGG-LPIPS are inadequate, failing to account for modality-specific physics or the structural nuances of acoustic imaging. We close this gap with a TinyUSFM-based evaluation framework featuring two distinct metrics: TinyUSFM-uLPIPS, a full-reference perceptual distance based on multi-layer token relations, and TinyUSFM-NRQ, a deployable no-reference quality score utilizing clean-manifold modeling and worst-region aggregation to detect localized harmful artifacts. We demonstrate that the presented metrics have four unique advantages: 1) Task-linked quality, where TinyUSFM-uLPIPS achieves superior calibration with semantic task damage, accurately reflecting Dice-score drops in segmentation where VGG-based metrics fail; 2) Cross-organ comparability, maintaining stable scoring scales and consistent severity rankings across diverse anatomical sites and domain-shifted data; 3) PSNR-consistent sensitivity, with TinyUSFM-NRQ providing a reliable quality score without ground-truth images that remains consistent with traditional fidelity benchmarks (i.e. PSNR); and 4) Clinical utility, improving the prediction of expert preference from 47.2$\%$ to 72.8$\%$ accuracy and producing super-resolution reconstructions preferred by sonographers. By integrating these advantages into a unified assessment and optimization loop, this work establishes a modality-aligned standard that finally bridges the gap between algorithmic performance and diagnostic utility. Our code is available at https://github.com/sextant-fable/US-Metrics. |
| title | Defining Robust Ultrasound Quality Metrics via an Ultrasound Foundation Model |
| topic | Image and Video Processing |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.19512 |