2026 International Ultrasonics Symposium Challenge

2026 International Ultrasonics Symposium Challenge

October 4-8, 2026 | Raleigh, North Carolina, USA

Link to the IEEE 2026 IUS website

Pulse-echo quantitative ultrasound (QUS) is a well-established research field. Studies have demonstrated the diagnostic values of QUS features in a wide range of clinical and preclinical applications. In the past ten years, major medical ultrasound companies have introduced commercial implementations of QUS features motivated by their potential as indicators of fatty liver disease.

Despite the increasing interest in QUS, important challenges remain, most importantly the need to compensate for the effects of intervening tissues between the transducer and the tissue of interest. To address these challenges, novel QUS methods have been investigated to improve the compensation for total attenuation along the acoustic path and to reduce the effects of aberration through estimation of the speed of sound.

Numerous algorithms and methods exist, and the time has come to compare and evaluate them in a rigorous matter. The proposed challenge will provide (i) a wide platform to bring together research efforts from laboratories across the globe and (ii) a framework to compare the QUS algorithms developed by these laboratories in a uniform and standardized manner. Based on ultrasound data generated from realistic simulations and acquired from phantoms with known acoustical properties, participants will compete to develop the most accurate and precise methods (in terms of bias and variance) and with the best lesion detectability.

OBJECTIVES

Overall Goal: Provide a uniform framework to compare the performance of different attenuation and speed of sound estimation algorithms over a wide range of expected values.

Specific objective 1: Identify the algorithms that provide the most accurate and precise estimates of the attenuation coefficient and speed of sound over a wide range of conditions using radio-frequency (RF) data from computational and experimental phantoms.

Specific objective 2: Identify the algorithms that provide the best lesion detectability, i.e., able to detect the smallest spatial variation of attenuation or speed of sound.
Specific objective 3: Identify the algorithms that provide the most robust estimates of attenuation and speed of sound to the presence of near-field aberration.

Data format: The downloaded Matlab data are named “Dataset_1_ L74.mat” to “Dataset_N_ L74.mat” and “Dataset_1_L115.mat” to “Dataset_N_L115.mat”. The order and the names of files have no meaning except the suffix indicates what transducer was use (_L74 and _L115 for L7-4 and L11-5, respectively). Each mat file contains the full transmit receive RF matrices of size 128 by 128 by Number of time samples. The first and second dimensions are the transmit and receive element respectively and the third dimension is time sampled at the rate specified in in a structure variable also describing the properties of the transducers. With this, the participants are completely blind to the nature of the data.

Result format: Participants must adhere strictly to the following format for their results. Participants can submit results for SoS or Att or both following the following guidelines:

Results mat files should be named as “Result_k_L74_SoS”, “Result_k_L74_Att”, “Result_k_L115_SoS”. or “Result_k_L115_SoS”, where k is the index of the input file used to generate the results. Each .mat file should be a 2D matrix of size 501 by 501 representing a physical size of 5 by 5 cm with isotropic pixel size of 0.01 cm. Speed of sound values should be in m/s and attenuation values should be in dB/MHz/cm quantified as the attenuation in dB/cm at 3MHz divided by 3MHz for L7-4 and at 8MHz divided by 8MHz for L11-5 .

Results upload: Follow guidelines provide during registration to upload your result matrices. Scoring will be performed independently on SoS and Att results matrices, but you must submit all .mat files for the category you are participating in to be scored.

Prizes

Top three in each category will receive prizes during IUS 2026. We are thankful to our sponsor Verasonics for providing the awards and to our sponsor AIUM / QMIC – Pulse Echo Quantitative Ultrasound Biomarker Committee for providing the phantoms.

Results

Results will be posted after abstract submissions.