A Mixed Transmitting-Receiving Beamformer With a Robust Generalized Coherence Factor: Enhanced Resolution and...

Area of Science:

• Medical Imaging
• Ultrasound Technology
• Signal Processing

Background:

• Adaptive beamforming, including minimum variance (MV) and generalized coherence factor (GCF) methods, is crucial for ultrasound imaging.
• Existing MV methods show limited contrast improvement, while GCF methods struggle with speckle distortion.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a novel ultrasound beamforming approach enhancing spatial resolution and contrast in synthetic aperture (SA) imaging.
• To address limitations of existing MV and GCF beamformers.

Main Methods:

• Redefining the MV optimization problem by minimizing total transmit and receive power.
• Estimating covariance matrices for adaptive weighting vectors.
• Incorporating data compounding as a spatial low-pass filter into the GCF method.
• Utilizing robust principal component analysis (RPCA) for final output.

Main Results:

• Achieved mean improvements of 89% in full-width at half-maximum and 94% in contrast ratio compared to traditional delay-and-sum (DAS) beamforming.
• Demonstrated significant enhancement in spatial resolution and contrast.
• Showcased improved performance regarding computational complexity.

Conclusions:

• The proposed novel beamforming method effectively enhances ultrasound imaging quality.
• The combined MV and GCF approach offers superior performance over traditional methods.
• This technique presents a valuable advancement for synthetic aperture ultrasound imaging.