white or a light grey for healthy to black for unhealthy other options for varying hue saturation and or intensity between the two absolute values also exist the objective in each instance is to provide a display which when viewed by the system operator provides a clear quick indication of the health status of the patient with respect to the particular symptom being tested for outside the range between the first and second values it is unlikely that the tissue is either healthy or infarcted and therefore a third color for example blue or an intensity such as white might be chosen for determined absolute values of quantitative backscatter of these values it is apparent that while the discussion above has been with respect to a single point 22 in the heart muscle of the patient 24 the system would in fact be scanning the heart and would be viewing a large number of points in succession to develop the desired image the process described above would be repeated for each point of interest being scanned so that the final image would be of the entire area of the heart or other body organ in which a potential problem exists in utilizing the system shown in fig1 the selection of the point 26 at which there is a pool of moving blood to be used in making the attenuation determination for a given scan point 22 may be performed by the operator on a point by point basis or may be performed automatically when the process is performed manually a sample volume cursor appearing on the screen of display 48 may be moved in conventional.