Implementation of color-flow plane-wave imaging in real-time

Author(s):  
F. Guidi ◽  
A. Dallai ◽  
E. Boni ◽  
A. Ramalli ◽  
P. Tortoli
Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (15) ◽  
pp. 4967
Author(s):  
Guillermo Cosarinsky ◽  
Jorge F. Cruza ◽  
Jorge Camacho

Plane Wave Imaging (PWI) has been recently proposed for fast ultrasound inspections in the Non-Destructive-Testing (NDT) field. By using a single (or a reduced number) of plane wave emissions and parallel beamforming in reception, frame rates of hundreds to thousands of images per second can be achieved without significant image quality losses with regard to the Total Focusing Method (TFM) or Phased Array (PA). This work addresses the problem of applying PWI in the presence of arbitrarily shaped interfaces, which is a common problem in NDT. First, the mathematical formulation for generating a plane wave inside a component of arbitrary geometry is given, and the characteristics of the resultant acoustic field are analyzed by simulation, showing plane wavefronts with non-uniform amplitude. Then, an imaging strategy is proposed, accounting for this amplitude effect. Finally, the proposed method is experimentally validated, and its application limits are discussed.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 640
Author(s):  
Yujia Tang ◽  
Zhangjian Li ◽  
Yaoyao Cui ◽  
Chen Yang ◽  
Jiabing Lv ◽  
...  

Ultrasound plane wave imaging technology has been applied to more clinical situations than ever before because of its rapid imaging speed and stable imaging quality. Most transducers used in plane wave imaging are linear arrays, but their structures limit the application of plane wave imaging technology in some special clinical situations, especially in the endoscopic environment. In the endoscopic environment, the size of the linear array transducer is strictly miniaturized, and the imaging range is also limited to the near field. Meanwhile, the near field of a micro linear array has serious mutual interferences between elements, which is against the imaging quality of near field. Therefore, we propose a new structure of a micro ultrasound linear array for plane wave imaging. In this paper, a theoretical comparison is given through sound field and imaging simulations. On the basis of primary work and laboratory technology, micro uniform and non-uniform linear arrays were made and experimented with the phantom setting. We selected appropriate evaluation parameters to verify the imaging results. Finally, we concluded that the micro non-uniform linear array eliminated the artifacts better than the micro uniform linear array without the additional use of signal processing methods, especially for target points in the near-field. We believe this study provides a possible solution for plane wave imaging in cramped environments like endoscopy.


2016 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 172-188
Author(s):  
Naoki Sunaguchi ◽  
Yoshiki Yamakoshi ◽  
Takahito Nakajima

This study investigates shear wave phase map reconstruction using a limited number of color flow images (CFIs) acquired with a color Doppler ultrasound imaging instrument. We propose an efficient reconstruction method to considerably reduce the number of CFIs required for reconstruction and compare this method with Fourier analysis-based color Doppler shear wave imaging. The proposed method uses a two-step phase reconstruction process, including an initial phase map derived from four CFIs using an advanced iterative algorithm of optical interferometry. The second step reduces phase artifacts in the initial phase map using an iterative correction procedure that cycles between the Fourier and inverse Fourier domains while imposing directional filtering and total variation regularization. We demonstrate the efficacy of this method using synthetic and experimental data of a breast phantom and human breast tissue. Our results show that the proposed method maintains image quality and reduces the number of CFIs required to four; previous methods have required at least 32 CFIs to achieve equivalent image quality. The proposed method is applicable to real-time shear wave elastography using a continuous shear wave produced by a mechanical vibrator.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (14) ◽  
pp. 4856
Author(s):  
Che-Chou Shen ◽  
Yen-Chen Chu

Conventional ultrasonic coherent plane-wave (PW) compounding corresponds to Delay-and-Sum (DAS) beamforming of low-resolution images from distinct PW transmit angles. Nonetheless, the trade-off between the level of clutter artifacts and the number of PW transmit angle may compromise the image quality in ultrafast acquisition. Delay-Multiply-and-Sum (DMAS) beamforming in the dimension of PW transmit angle is capable of suppressing clutter interference and is readily compatible with the conventional method. In DMAS, a tunable p value is used to modulate the signal coherence estimated from the low-resolution images to produce the final high-resolution output and does not require huge memory allocation to record all the received channel data in multi-angle PW imaging. In this study, DMAS beamforming is used to construct a novel coherence-based power Doppler detection together with the complementary subset transmit (CST) technique to further reduce the noise level. For p = 2.0 as an example, simulation results indicate that the DMAS beamforming alone can improve the Doppler SNR by 8.2 dB compared to DAS counterpart. Another 6-dB increase in Doppler SNR can be further obtained when the CST technique is combined with DMAS beamforming with sufficient ensemble averaging. The CST technique can also be performed with DAS beamforming, though the improvement in Doppler SNR and CNR is relatively minor. Experimental results also agree with the simulations. Nonetheless, since the DMAS beamforming involves multiplicative operation, clutter filtering in the ensemble direction has to be performed on the low-resolution images before DMAS to remove the stationary tissue without coupling from the flow signal.


2019 ◽  
Vol 150 (1) ◽  
pp. 014101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel A. Rehn ◽  
Yuan Shen ◽  
Marika E. Buchholz ◽  
Madan Dubey ◽  
Raju Namburu ◽  
...  

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ibrahim Bolic ◽  
Jesper Udesen ◽  
Fredrik Gran ◽  
Jørgen A. Jensen

Author(s):  
Bruno-Felix Osmanski ◽  
Gabriel Montaldo ◽  
Jeremy Bercoff ◽  
Thanasis Loupas ◽  
Mathias Fink ◽  
...  

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas E. Dillon ◽  
Christopher A. Schuetz ◽  
Richard D. Martin ◽  
Daniel G. Mackrides ◽  
Shouyuan Shi ◽  
...  

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