The nature of ultrasound imaging makes it challenging to perform quantitative quality control tests representative of clinical performance. IPEM Report No. 102 outlines several different tests which monitor aspects of the systems performance likely to affect the clinical efficiency following deterioration and change. Such tests include measurement of axial and lateral resolution, slice thickness, contrast resolution and low contrast penetration using ultrasound phantoms. Such phantoms consist of cylindrical objects and wire filaments embedded within homogeneous tissue-mimicking material. The ability of an ultrasound system to resolve the contrast difference between the cylindrical targets and background is regarded as an indicator of imaging performance; however, cylindrical targets are not necessarily representative of the clinical situation where ellipsoidal or spherical lesions may be considered more appropriate. To date, spherical lesion target phantoms have been produced in specialist research laboratories and are, thus, not widely available. Accordingly, this study sought to examine a relatively new commercially available anechoic spherical lesion phantom to determine its efficacy for objective evaluation of performance change. Several modern medical ultrasound systems were tested using the Gammex RMI 408 Spherical Lesion target phantom, containing 2mm and 4mm diameter anechoic spherical targets located within one plane throughout the phantom depth. A Matlab® program was used for automatic objective image quality analysis. Preliminary results will be presented on the automated objective evaluation, metric repeatability and reproducibility. Simulated probe faults will be used to establish test efficacy and the results will be compared to traditional QA testing.