Which artifact is commonly seen around implants on breast ultrasound due to reflections within the implant?

• A. Reverberation Artifact With Implants
• B. Shadowing Artifact
• C. Ring-Down Artifact
• D. Edge Artifact

Answer: (A)

Reverberation occurs when the ultrasound pulse keeps bouncing between highly reflective surfaces, creating multiple, evenly spaced echoes. Around breast implants, the implant shell and inner surfaces act as strong reflectors, so the wave ping-pongs back and forth and several echoes return to the transducer. This produces a line of bright, parallel echoes inside the implant region—the telltale reverberation artifact with implants. It’s a predictable artifact that does not represent real tissue. Other artifacts either dim the signal behind the implant (shadowing) or alter edges of curved structures (edge artifact), or arise from resonant effects of gas or metal (ring-down), but they do not present as the characteristic series of internal echoes within the implant itself.