TY - GEN
T1 - A new direct pixel-based focusing method for medical ultrasound imaging
T2 - Medical Imaging 2011: Ultrasonic Imaging, Tomography, and Therapy
AU - Lee, Yuhwa
AU - Piao, Chunsheng
AU - Kim, Taewan
AU - Chang, Jin Ho
AU - Song, Tai Kyong
AU - Yoo, Yangmo
PY - 2011
Y1 - 2011
N2 - In medical ultrasound imaging, scan conversion is used to geometrically transform polar coordinate ultrasound data into Cartesian raster data for display. In scan conversion, Moiré undersampling artifacts can be avoided by using various interpolation techniques such as nearest neighbor and bilinear. However, this interpolation-based scan conversion introduces blurring of fine details in ultrasound images. In this paper, a new beamforming technique, named compounded direct pixel beamforming (CDPB), is proposed to remove blurring artifacts from scan conversion. In CDPB, receive focusing is performed directly on each display pixel in Cartesian coordinates with raw radio-frequency (RF) data from two adjacent transmit firings so that artifacts from scan conversion can be substantially removed. To evaluate the proposed CDPB method, 64-channel pre-beamformed RF data were captured by a commercial ultrasound machine (SA-9900, Medison Corp., Seoul, Korea) from a tissue mimicking phantom (ATS Laboratories, Bridgeport, CT, USA). To quantify the performance of the proposed method, the information entropy contrast (IEC) value was measured. From the experiments, the proposed method provided IEC improvement by 2.8 over the conventional scan conversion method. These results indicate that the proposed new beamforming method could be used for enhancing the image quality in medical ultrasound imaging.
AB - In medical ultrasound imaging, scan conversion is used to geometrically transform polar coordinate ultrasound data into Cartesian raster data for display. In scan conversion, Moiré undersampling artifacts can be avoided by using various interpolation techniques such as nearest neighbor and bilinear. However, this interpolation-based scan conversion introduces blurring of fine details in ultrasound images. In this paper, a new beamforming technique, named compounded direct pixel beamforming (CDPB), is proposed to remove blurring artifacts from scan conversion. In CDPB, receive focusing is performed directly on each display pixel in Cartesian coordinates with raw radio-frequency (RF) data from two adjacent transmit firings so that artifacts from scan conversion can be substantially removed. To evaluate the proposed CDPB method, 64-channel pre-beamformed RF data were captured by a commercial ultrasound machine (SA-9900, Medison Corp., Seoul, Korea) from a tissue mimicking phantom (ATS Laboratories, Bridgeport, CT, USA). To quantify the performance of the proposed method, the information entropy contrast (IEC) value was measured. From the experiments, the proposed method provided IEC improvement by 2.8 over the conventional scan conversion method. These results indicate that the proposed new beamforming method could be used for enhancing the image quality in medical ultrasound imaging.
KW - Ultrasound scan conversion
KW - blurring artifact
KW - compounded direct pixel beamforming
KW - undersampling artifact
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/79957935519
U2 - 10.1117/12.878958
DO - 10.1117/12.878958
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:79957935519
SN - 9780819485106
T3 - Progress in Biomedical Optics and Imaging - Proceedings of SPIE
BT - Medical Imaging 2011
Y2 - 13 February 2011 through 14 February 2011
ER -