A New Discrimination Method of Imaging Regions for Improved Ultrafast Ultrasound Imaging Performance
Shahad A. Thanoon
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Ninevah University, Mosul, Iraq
Paper #8982 received 24 May 2023; revised manuscript received 8 Sep 2023; accepted for publication 8 Sep 2023; published online 16 Dec 2023.
DOI: 10.18287/JBPE23.09.040310
Abstract
Up to date, adaptive beamforming technologies have been successfully introduced to medical ultrasound imaging, resulting in a considerable improvement in imaging quality versus non-adaptive delay-and-sum beamformers. Minimum Variance (MV) adaptive beamforming improved resolution rather than contrast. At the same time, Eigen Space Based Minimum Variance (ESBMV) was formerly projected to enhance contrast in MV, but at the expense of the appearance of black regions around hyperechoic targets. Partial-ESBMV (PESBMV) method has recently controlled the appearance of these black regions with a little reduction in the level of contrast. In this paper, a new technique of beamformer is proposed to improve the imaging quality of PESBMV. This approach uses two factors as a detection tool to adaptively indicate the regions of the image, then it applies the suitable beamforming method in each region. The results show that lateral resolution increased by 52% compared to that in PESBMV. Moreover, the contrast ratio is also increased with the preservation of the homogeneity of the background speckle. The proposed method is compared to MV, ESBMV, and PESBMV using in vitro experimental radio frequency data, showing improvement in the speckle preservation without affecting lateral resolution, and finally providing excellent image contrast performance.
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