TY - GEN
T1 - Improved plane-wave high frame rate imaging using retrospective transmitfocusing and filter-derived coherence-index weighting
AU - Hu, Chang Lin
AU - Jeng, Geng Shi
AU - Wang, Yu Hsin
AU - Li, Pai Chi
AU - Li, Meng Lin
PY - 2010
Y1 - 2010
N2 - Recently, a wide spectrum of new applications in biomedical ultrasound suchas real time 3D ultrasound and transient elastography has triggered the need ofhigh frame-rate imaging. One of the methods to achieve high frame-rate imagingis to use plane wave excitation (PWE) with which a single insonification issufficient to form an image. However, due to the lack of transmit focusing, thesignal-to-noise-ratio (SNR), contrast, and spatial resolution of the resultantimages are lower compared with a conventional focused transmission. To solvethis problem, we propose a filter-based retrospective focusing techniquecombined with filter-derived coherence-index weighting (FRFFCI weighting) forhigh frame-rate imaging with PWE. A 2-D filter is designed and applied tobeamformed baseband data to retrieve transmit focusing. Then a filter-derivedcoherence index (FCI) at each imaging point is used as a weighting factor tofurther improve the filter-retrieved focusing quality. Here FCI is a coherencemeasure of the filtered signal samples in the sliding filter kernel, Due to thesidelobe-suppression nature of the designed 2-D filter, FCIs are low atsidelobes; thus FCI weighting can further suppress the sidelobes in the filteredsignal samples. Simulation results demonstrated that our proposed FRFFCIweighting technique can enhance the image quality of high frame-rate imagingwith single PWE reducing the sidelobes, and improving the SNR and spatialresolution while being capable of retaining the high frame rate. Since it isapplied over high frame-rate imaging with single PWE, FRFFCI weighting performedafter beamforming is inherently insusceptible to motion artifacts. In addition,coded excitation techniques can be integrated into our technique to furtherimprove SNR.
AB - Recently, a wide spectrum of new applications in biomedical ultrasound suchas real time 3D ultrasound and transient elastography has triggered the need ofhigh frame-rate imaging. One of the methods to achieve high frame-rate imagingis to use plane wave excitation (PWE) with which a single insonification issufficient to form an image. However, due to the lack of transmit focusing, thesignal-to-noise-ratio (SNR), contrast, and spatial resolution of the resultantimages are lower compared with a conventional focused transmission. To solvethis problem, we propose a filter-based retrospective focusing techniquecombined with filter-derived coherence-index weighting (FRFFCI weighting) forhigh frame-rate imaging with PWE. A 2-D filter is designed and applied tobeamformed baseband data to retrieve transmit focusing. Then a filter-derivedcoherence index (FCI) at each imaging point is used as a weighting factor tofurther improve the filter-retrieved focusing quality. Here FCI is a coherencemeasure of the filtered signal samples in the sliding filter kernel, Due to thesidelobe-suppression nature of the designed 2-D filter, FCIs are low atsidelobes; thus FCI weighting can further suppress the sidelobes in the filteredsignal samples. Simulation results demonstrated that our proposed FRFFCIweighting technique can enhance the image quality of high frame-rate imagingwith single PWE reducing the sidelobes, and improving the SNR and spatialresolution while being capable of retaining the high frame rate. Since it isapplied over high frame-rate imaging with single PWE, FRFFCI weighting performedafter beamforming is inherently insusceptible to motion artifacts. In addition,coded excitation techniques can be integrated into our technique to furtherimprove SNR.
KW - coherence weighting
KW - High frame rate imaging
KW - plane wave excitation
KW - retrospective focusing
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=80054085135&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/ULTSYM.2010.5935716
DO - 10.1109/ULTSYM.2010.5935716
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:80054085135
SN - 9781457703829
T3 - Proceedings - IEEE Ultrasonics Symposium
SP - 1916
EP - 1919
BT - 2010 IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium, IUS 2010
Y2 - 11 October 2010 through 14 October 2010
ER -