The dead or ring down zone is the distance from the front face of the transducer to the first echo that is identifiable. The signals from this region are unsuitable. The dead zone is the result of transducer ringing and reverberations from the interface between the transducer and the scanned object. Impedance matching between the transducer and the receiver is important to avoid electrical ringing.
With an increase of the frequency, the pulse length and the depth of the dead zone decrease, if all other parameters remain constant. The acoustic power also affects the depth of the dead zone.

(dB) A customary logarithmic measure most commonly used (in various ways) for measuring sound. Decibel is a way to express the ratio of two sound intensities: dB=10log10I1/I2 being I1 the reference. If one sound is 1 bel (10 decibel) 'louder' than another, this means the louder sound is 10 times louder than the fainter one. A difference of 20 decibel corresponds to an increase of 10 x 10 or 100 times in intensity.
The intensity of ultrasound decreases during the propagation and is measured in db/cm.
For sound pressure (the pressure exerted by the sound waves) 0 decibel equals 20 microPascal (μPa), and for ultrasonic power 0 decibel sometimes equals 1 picoWatt.

See also dB/dt, Phon, and Logarithms.

Color assignments can be switched on any ultrasound system and are used as directional indicators. The colors of red and blue indicates flow direction in color Doppler.
Red is encoded to represent flows toward the transducer.
Blue pixel encoding is used to depict flows away from the transducer.

See also Directional Color Power Doppler.

(DI) The directivity index is the value in dB of ten times the common logarithm of the directivity factor. The directivity factor is the ratio of the sound intensity produced by a test transducer on a specific axis to that of a point source that is emitting the same acoustic power. Since the specific axis is usually one of maximum radiation, the directivity index is usually greater than zero.

See also dB/dt.

The Doppler spectrum indicates how the echo power is distributed according to the Doppler shift frequency. The Doppler shift frequency is directly related to the radial velocity of the scatterer.

See also Modal Velocity, Doppler Effect and Doppler Ultrasound.