Optimization of the Multi-element Synthetic Transmit Aperture Method for Medical Ultrasound Imaging Applications

Tasinkevych, Yuriy; Trots, Ihor; Nowicki, Andrzej; Lewandowski, Marcin

doi:10.2478/v10168-012-0007-6

Cited by 6 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…The STA technique was used to reconstruct the final image. To achieve frame rate increase from approximately 50 fps for the standard PA beamforming method, assuming a 120 mm visualization depth and 128 scanlines reconstructed per frame, to approximately 400 fps in the proposed method, the 32-element transmit subaperture was laterally translated by an optimal distance of 8 elements between subsequent pulse emissions (Tasinkevych et al, 2012a). For each sub-aperture position a compounding of 3 beam-steered waves was used.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Archives of Acoustics

Tasinkevych

Lewandowski

Klimonda

et al. 2018

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Commercially available cardiac scanners use 64-128 elements phased-array (PA) probes and classical delay-and-sum beamforming to reconstruct a sector B-mode image. For portable and hand-held scanners, which are the fastest growing market, channel count reduction can greatly decrease the total power and cost of devices. The introduction of ultra-fast imaging methods based on plane waves and diverging waves provides new insight into heart's moving structures and enables the implementation of new myocardial assessment and advanced flow estimation methods, thanks to much higher frame rates. The goal of this study was to show the feasibility of reducing the channel count in the diverging wave synthetic aperture image reconstruction method for phased-arrays. The application of ultra-fast 32-channel subaperture imaging combined with spatial compounding allowed the frame rate of approximately 400 fps for 120 mm visualization to be achieved with image quality obtained on par with the classical 64-channel beamformer. Specifically, it was shown that the proposed method resulted in image quality metrics (lateral resolution, contrast and contrast-to-noise ratio), for a visualization depth not exceeding 50 mm, that were comparable with the classical PA beamforming. For larger visualization depths (80-100 mm) a slight degradation of the above parameters was observed. In conclusion, diverging wave phased-array imaging with reduced number of channels is a promising technology for low-cost, energy efficient hand-held cardiac scanners.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Archives of Acoustics

Tasinkevych

Lewandowski

Klimonda

et al. 2018

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“…Multi-element synthetic transmit aperture (MSTA) imaging [62], [63] has been proposed to use a finite number of transmit elements to emulate a single element in order to achieve higher frame-rate and deeper penetration depth compared to the conventional STA method. However, this method requires high computational load and system complexity since all the elements are used in reception.…”

Section: Subarray/micro-beamforming Techniquementioning

confidence: 99%

“…imaging [62], [63] have been proposed to use finite number of transmit elements to emulate a virtual element in order to achieve higher frame-rate and deeper penetration depth than the conventional STA method. However, this method has a high computational load and a high hardware complexity because all the receive elements are fully connected to the back-end system.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Large-Pitch Methods for 2D/3D Synthetic Transmit Aperture Ultrasound Imaging

Liu¹

2023

Preprint

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This dissertation describes ultrasound algorithms developed on 2D/3D synthetic transmit aperture (STA) imaging. They demonstrate significant reduction in the hardware complexity of the 2D/3D STA ultrasound imaging system while maintaining the reasonable image quality. A large-pitch synthetic transmit aperture (LPSTA) method integrated with a spatial response function (SRF) was designed in this dissertation. The LPSTA demonstrated the better lateral resolution (+25%), contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) (+24.6%) and contrast ratio (CR) (+42.3%) than B-mode with the similar hardware complexity. LPSTA with 15-fold reduction in number measurement channels (the product of number of transmission events and the number of digital receive channels) achieved comparable image contrast to the standard STA with a full array at the cost of a reduced field of view. We extended the LPSTA method to 2D matrix array for 3D imaging, referred to as 3D-LPSTA system. A new Gaussian approximated SRF (G-SRF) was derived and integrated in the image reconstruction process to significantly improve the image contrast. With approximately 1900-fold reduction in number of measurement channels, 3D-LPSTA can provide image contrast at the specific region of interest (ROI) comparable to the standard 3D-STA with a full array and significantly better than a periodically sparse array with similar complexity. In addition to reducing the system complexity, the 3D-LPSTA achieve 700-fold reduction in computational complexity and 523-fold reduction in data storage. We proposed to combine the LPSTA with micro-beamforming technique to focus in a ROI: focused transmission and focused receiving (XTXR). The proposed XTXR method showed the image quality comparable to the standard STA a full array at the selected ROI. Moreover, the proposed XTXR method demonstrated significantly superior image quality compared to the conventional B-mode imaging with the similar micro-beamforming configuration. Finally, the beam pattern analysis was used to estimate the lateral FOV of XTXR and demonstrated a good agreement with the experimental measurement. This dissertation investigates all these proposed advanced ultrasound algorithms, with the goal of implementing these methods to extend its application in clinics.

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“…It offers a promising solution to the aforementioned constraints, suitable for low-cost portable devices which should operate with a limited number of signal channels and limited power consumption. Specifically, the SD-STA method is based on a novel approach which combines the non-overlapping sub-aperture data acquisition of the back-scattered ultrasound echoes by analogy with the TD-STA methods (Gammelmark et al, 2003;Jensen et al, 2006;Nikolov et al, 2008;Trots et al, 2009;Tasinkevych et al, 2012) and the ultrasound data processing in the Fourier spectrum domain. Using a limited number of elements in the transmit (TX) and receive (RX) modes allowed the amount of acoustic data collected and transferred during a single TX/RX event to be reduced by utilizing a limited number of signal channels (64 and 256 considered in this study).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

3D Synthetic Aperture Imaging Method in Spectrum Domain for Low-Cost Portable Ultrasound Systems

2023

Archives of Acoustics

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Portable, hand-held ultrasound devices capable of 3D imaging in real time are the next generation of the medical imaging apparatus adapted not only for professional medical stuff but for a wide group of less advanced users. Limited power supply capacity and the relatively small number of channels used for the ultrasound data acquisition are the most important limitations that should be taken into account when designing such devices and when developing the corresponding image reconstruction algorithms.The aim of this study was to develop a new 3D ultrasound imaging method which would take into account the above-mentioned features of the new generation of ultrasonic devices -low-cost portable general access scanners.It was based on the synthetic transmit aperture (STA) method combined with the Fourier spectrum domain (SD) acoustic data processing. The STA using a limited number of elements in transmit and receive modes for ultrasound data acquisition allowed both aforementioned constraints to be obeyed simultaneously. Moreover, the computational speed of the fast Fourier transform (FFT) algorithm utilized for the ultrasound image synthesis in the spectrum domain makes the proposed method to be more competitive compared to the conventional time domain (TD) STA method based on the delay-and-sum (DAS) technique, especially in the case of 3D imaging in real time mode.Performance of the proposed method was verified using numerical 3D acoustic data simulated in the Field II program for MATLAB and using experimental data from the custom design 3D scattering phantom collected by means of the Verasonics Vantage 256™ research ultrasound system equipped with the dedicated 1024-element 2D matrix transducer.The method proposed in this paper was about 80 times faster than its counterpart based on the time domain synthetic transmit aperture (TD-STA) approach in the numerical example of a single 3D ultrasound image synthesized from 4 partial images each containing 64 × 64 × 512 pixels.It was also shown that the acceleration of the image reconstruction was achieved at the cost of a slight deterioration in the image quality assessed by the contrast and contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR).

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Optimization of the Multi-element Synthetic Transmit Aperture Method for Medical Ultrasound Imaging Applications

Cited by 6 publications

References 22 publications

Archives of Acoustics

Archives of Acoustics

Large-Pitch Methods for 2D/3D Synthetic Transmit Aperture Ultrasound Imaging

3D Synthetic Aperture Imaging Method in Spectrum Domain for Low-Cost Portable Ultrasound Systems

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