Step 1: The Hounsfield scale, named after Godfrey Hounsfield, quantifies the X-ray attenuation of a tissue in computed tomography (CT).
Step 2: On this scale water is arbitrarily assigned a value of 0 HU and air is about -1000 HU, while dense bone reads several hundred to over a thousand HU. The HU value of each voxel determines its grey-scale brightness on the CT image.
Step 3: The other modalities use different physical principles and units. MRI relies on signal intensity from proton relaxation, PET measures radiotracer uptake, and ultrasound (USG) depends on reflected sound waves, so none of them is described by Hounsfield units.
Step 4: Therefore HU is a measure of CT attenuation.