Improving axial resolution based on the deconvolution recovery method combined with adaptive weighting techniques for ultrasound imaging

Abstract

BACKGROUND: A fundamental challenge in medical ultrasound imaging is to improve the resolution accurately. Adaptive beamforming is often used to improve lateral resolution, such as minimum variance (MV) and phase coherence factor (PCF). However, it is difficult to improve the axial resolution due to the limitation of the spatial pulse length (SPL) of the transmitted signal. OBJECTIVE: A deconvolution recovery method combines two adaptive weighting techniques to improve axial resolution. METHODS: A deconvolution recovery (DR) technique is used to improve axial resolution with a shorter SPL. Then, the DR is combined with MV and PCF (DR-MVPCF) to suppress the sidelobe. The influence of different transmission modes, regularization parameters, and the estimation of point spread function are discussed on the proposed algorithm. RESULTS: In simulation, DR-MVPCF improved axial resolution from 0.41 mm (0.98 λ) to 0.09 mm (0.21 λ) compared with MV-PCF. In the water bath experiment, DR-MVPCF provided improvement of axial resolution from 0.39 mm (0.93 λ) to 0.07 mm (0.17 λ) compared with MV-PCF. In-vivo data experiment, the DR-MVPCF method increased the speckle signal-to-noise ratio and visibility of the structure while the contrast ratio and contrast-noise ratio decreased. CONCLUSIONS: The proposed method can improve the axial resolution significantly.