Minimum variance beamforming combined with adaptive coherence weighting applied to medical ultrasound imaging
Currently, the nonadaptive delay-and-sum (DAS) beamformer is used in medical ultrasound imaging. However, due to its data-independent nature, DAS leads to images with limited resolution and contrast. In this paper, an adaptive minimum variance (MV)-based beamformer that combines the MV and coherence...
| Veröffentlicht in: | IEEE transactions on ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control. - 1986. - 56(2009), 9 vom: 02. Sept., Seite 1923-31 |
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| Format: | Online-Aufsatz |
| Sprache: | English |
| Veröffentlicht: |
2009
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| Zugriff auf das übergeordnete Werk: | IEEE transactions on ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control |
| Schlagworte: | Journal Article Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't |
| Zusammenfassung: | Currently, the nonadaptive delay-and-sum (DAS) beamformer is used in medical ultrasound imaging. However, due to its data-independent nature, DAS leads to images with limited resolution and contrast. In this paper, an adaptive minimum variance (MV)-based beamformer that combines the MV and coherence factor (CF) weighting is introduced and adapted to medical ultrasound imaging. MV-adaptive beamformers can improve the image quality in terms of resolution and sidelobes by suppressing off-axis signals, while keeping onaxis ones. In addition, CF weighting can improve contrast and sidelobes by emphasizing the in-phase signals and reducing the out-of-phase ones. Combining MV and CF weighting results in simultaneous improvement of imaging resolution and contrast, outperforming both DAS and MV beamformers. In addition, because of the power of CF in reducing the focusing errors, the proposed method presents satisfactory robustness against sound velocity inhomogeneities, outperforming the regularized MV beamformer. The excellent performance of the proposed beamforming approach is demonstrated by several simulated examples |
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| Beschreibung: | Date Completed 14.01.2010 Date Revised 08.10.2009 published: Print Citation Status MEDLINE |
| ISSN: | 1525-8955 |
| DOI: | 10.1109/TUFFC.2009.1268 |