Effect of element directivity on adaptive beamforming applied to high-frame-rate ultrasound

Refraction-Corrected Transcranial Ultrasound Imaging Through the Human Temporal Window Using a Single Probe

Transcranial ultrasound imaging (TUI) is a diagnostic modality with numerous applications, but unfortunately, it is hindered by phase aberration caused by the skull. In this article, we propose to reconstruct a transcranial B-mode image with a refraction-corrected synthetic aperture imaging (SAI) scheme. First, the compressional sound velocity of the aberrator (i.e., the skull) is estimated using the bidirectional headwave technique. The medium is described with four layers (i.e., lens, water, skull, and water), and a fast marching method calculates the travel times between individual array elements and image pixels. Finally, a delay-and-sum algorithm is used for image reconstruction with coherent compounding. The point spread function (PSF) in a wire phantom image and reconstructed with the conventional technique (using a constant sound speed throughout the medium), and the proposed method was quantified with numerical synthetic data and experiments with a bone-mimicking plate and a human skull, compared with the PSF achieved in a ground truth image of the medium without the aberrator (i.e., the bone plate or skull). A phased-array transducer (P4-1, ATL/Philips, 2.5 MHz, 96 elements, pitch = 0.295 mm) was used for the experiments. The results with the synthetic signals, the bone-mimicking plate, and the skull indicated that the proposed method reconstructs the scatterers with an average lateral/axial localization error of 0.06/0.14 mm, 0.11/0.13 mm, and 1.0/0.32 mm, respectively. With the human skull, an average contrast ratio (CR) and full-width-half-maximum (FWHM) of 37.1 dB and 1.75 mm were obtained with the proposed approach, respectively. This corresponds to an improvement of CR and FWHM by 7.1 dB and 36% compared with the conventional method, respectively. These numbers were 12.7 dB and 41% with the bone-mimicking plate.

Deep-Learning Image Reconstruction for Real-Time Photoacoustic System

Recent advances in photoacoustic (PA) imaging have enabled detailed images of microvascular structure and quantitative measurement of blood oxygenation or perfusion. Standard reconstruction methods for PA imaging are based on solving an inverse problem using appropriate signal and system models. For handheld scanners, however, the ill-posed conditions of limited detection view and bandwidth yield low image contrast and severe structure loss in most instances. In this paper, we propose a practical reconstruction method based on a deep convolutional neural network (CNN) to overcome those problems. It is designed for real-time clinical applications and trained by large-scale synthetic data mimicking typical microvessel networks. Experimental results using synthetic and real datasets confirm that the deep-learning approach provides superior reconstructions compared to conventional methods.

Phase Modulation Beamforming for Ultrafast Plane-Wave Imaging

In order to improve the spatial resolution for high-frame-rate imaging, a new image formation approach is proposed based on introducing very weak aberration into received data, then combining the multiple results by taking the pixel-wise standard deviation of multiple aberrated images and subtracting the result from the delay-and-sum image. This approach is demonstrated in simulations, tissue-mimicking phantom experiments, and in vivo imaging. Simulations indicate the lateral full-width half-maximum (FWHM) of targets decreases by 38.24% ± 6.38%. In imaging wire targets in a tissue-mimicking phantom at 7.8 MHz, wire target FWHM decreases by 35.91% ± 5.39%. However, contrast was observed to decrease by 1.23 dB and contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) by 18.5% in phantom studies due to the subtraction of similar images, which increases the number of dark pixels in the image. Finally, the proposed technique is tested in vivo, with images showing improvements similar to those in tissue-mimicking phantoms, including increased separation between closely spaced targets.

Receive/Transmit Aperture Selection for 3D Ultrasound Imaging with a 2D Matrix Transducer

Recently, we realized a prototype matrix transducer consisting of 48 rows of 80 elements on top of a tiled set of Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) implementing a row-level control connecting one transmit/receive channel to an arbitrary subset of elements per row. A fully sampled array data acquisition is implemented by a column-by-column (CBC) imaging scheme (80 transmit-receive shots) which achieves 250 volumes/second (V/s) at a pulse repetition frequency of 20 kHz. However, for several clinical applications such as carotid pulse wave imaging (CPWI), a volume rate of 1000 per second is needed. This allows only 20 transmit-receive shots per 3D image. In this study, we propose a shifting aperture scheme and investigate the effects of receive/transmit aperture size and aperture shifting step in the elevation direction. The row-level circuit is used to interconnect elements of a receive aperture in the elevation (row) direction. An angular weighting method is used to suppress the grating lobes caused by the enlargement of the effective elevation pitch of the array, as a result of element interconnection in the elevation direction. The effective aperture size, level of grating lobes, and resolution/sidelobes are used to select suitable reception/transmission parameters. Based on our assessment, the proposed imaging sequence is a full transmission (all 80 elements excited at the same time), a receive aperture size of 5 and an aperture shifting step of 3. Numerical results obtained at depths of 10, 15, and 20 mm show that, compared to the fully sampled array, the 1000 V/s is achieved at the expense of, on average, about two times wider point spread function and 4 dB higher clutter level. The resulting grating lobes were at −27 dB. The proposed imaging sequence can be used for carotid pulse wave imaging to generate an informative 3D arterial stiffness map, for cardiovascular disease assessment.

Improvement of penetration of modified amplitude and phase estimation beamformer

PURPOSE

High-frame-rate ultrasound is the predominant technique for the measurement of tissue dynamics. It enables an imaging frame rate of over 1 kHz using unfocused transmit beams and parallel receive beamforming. On the other hand, the spatial resolution is degraded compared to the conventional method based on sequential transmissions of focused beams. For improvement of the spatial resolution of high-frame-rate ultrasound, we have investigated a kind of adaptive beamformer, i.e., amplitude and phase estimation (APES) beamformer.

METHOD

In our previous study, it was shown that the APES beamformer realized a significantly better spatial resolution than the conventional delay and sum (DAS) beamformer without sub-array averaging and diagonal loading by considering the directivity of each transducer element. By omitting sub-array averaging and adding sub-aperture beamforming, the computational load could also be reduced significantly. One shortcoming of the proposed APES beamformer with element directivity, i.e., modified APES beamformer, is the degradation of penetration compared with the conventional APES beamformer with sub-array averaging and diagonal loading. In the present study, sub-array averaging and diagonal loading were applied to the modified APES beamformer for the improvement of the penetration.

RESULTS

The conventional and modified APES beamformers realized similar performances when used with sub-array averaging and diagonal loading. Furthermore, the modified APES beamformer realized better spatial resolution and improved penetration when used with sub-aperture beamforming and diagonal loading. The modified APES beamformer with diagonal loading at 0.025 of the received power realized a penetration similar to that of the conventional APES beamformer with sub-array averaging and diagonal loading. The lateral spatial resolutions achieved with the conventional and modified APES beamformers were 0.36 and 0.31 mm, respectively. In addition, the modified APES beamformer could reduce the dimension of the covariance matrix to [Formula: see text], versus [Formula: see text] of the conventional APES beamformer, resulting in a computation time of only 1.1 %.

CONCLUSION

Penetration of the modified APES beamformer could be improved significantly by diagonal loading, which hardly increases the computational complexity.

Enhancing effect of phase coherence factor for improvement of spatial resolution in ultrasonic imaging

PURPOSE

Spatial resolution is one of the important factors that determines ultrasound image quality. In the present study, methods using the phase variance of ultrasonic echoes received by individual transducer elements have been examined for improvement of spatial resolution.

METHOD

An imaging method, i.e., phase coherence imaging, which uses the phase coherence factor (PCF) obtained from the phase variance of received ultrasonic echoes, was recently proposed. Spatial resolution is improved by weighting ultrasonic RF signals obtained by delay-and-sum (DAS) beam forming using PCF. In the present study, alternative PCFs, i.e., exponential PCF, harmonic PCF, and Gaussian PCF, have been proposed and examined for further improvement of spatial resolution.

RESULT

Spatial resolutions realized by the proposed PCFs were evaluated by an experiment using a phantom. The full widths at half maxima of the lateral profiles of an echo from a string phantom were 2.61 mm (DAS only), 1.46 mm (conventional PCF), and 0.48-0.62 mm (proposed PCFs).

CONCLUSION

The PCFs newly proposed in the present study showed better spatial resolutions than the conventional PCF. The proposed PCFs also realized better visualization of echoes from a diffuse scattering medium than the conventional PCF.