Determination of Resolution Limitation of Sonography used in Diagnosis of Cleft Lips and Palates

The oral clefts are abnormality that occurs to fetus during the development of lip and palate, which have affected numerous infants. The major problems associated with cleft lips and palates involve causing poor oral hygiene and increasing the chances of cavities. In order to prevent fetus from such an innate disease, diagnosis during pregnancy is extremely necessary. Moreover, the diagnosis of oral clefts must be completed during pregnancy and without major invasion to the pregnant, in order to avoid potential harm to babies. Therefore, ultrasound imaging, which is radiation-free, low-cost, and harmless, has been the predominant diagnosing modality since its invention. However, the resolving capability of ultrasound imaging is affected by many factors, such as noises and artifacts, which contribute to false diagnosis during medical examination, resulting in biased and potentially fake results. This strong limitation has caused a significant amount of babies that are failed to be confirmed. Therefore, understanding the limitation of ultrasound imaging is extremely important in terms of diagnosing oral clefts. Quantifying the limitation with living subjects is often problematic as individuals differ from each other and cause undesired inconsistency. To overcome this challenge, medical phantom is usually designed to evaluate and analyze different imaging modalities. Here, we designed an ultrasound imaging phantom using 3-dimentional printing, and then quantified the limiting sonography resolution by imaging it in aqueous environment. We concluded that there are certain limitations of different resolutions, which better illustrates the false diagnosis of oral clefts and palates. These results provide a reference criteria for using sonography to diagnose oral clefts.