Broadband ultrasound attenuation in the os calcis and its dependence on the receiver aperture size.

The broadband ultrasonic attenuation (BUA) was measured in 10 os calces on the same site with two transducer separations and five different receiving apertures built from perspex. The results displayed relative differences greater than 40%. However, a clear trend (increasing or decreasing BUA) with smaller aperture size or transducer separation was not observed and hence the differences do not seem to be predictable. The cause for this may be the influence of four factors--averaging, phase cancellation, diffraction and scattering--which are interactive and frequency dependent. This means that values measured with different equipment and experimental set-up are not directly comparable and hence the introduction of measurement standards seems to be necessary.