Ultrafast 3-D Ultrasound Imaging Using Row–Column Array-Specific Frame-Multiply-and-Sum Beamforming

Abstract

Row-column arrays have been shown to be able to generate 3-D ultrafast ultrasound images with an order of magnitude less independent electronic channels than traditional 2-D matrix arrays. Unfortunately, row-column array images suffer from major imaging artefacts due to high side-lobes, particularly when operating at high frame rates. This paper proposes a rowcolumn specific beamforming technique, for orthogonal plane wave transmissions, that exploits the incoherent nature of certain row-column array artefacts. A series of volumetric images are produced using row or column transmissions of 3-D plane waves. The voxel-wise geometric mean of the beamformed volumetric images from each row and column pair is taken prior to compounding, which drastically reduces the incoherent imaging artefacts in the resulting image compared to traditional coherent compounding. The effectiveness of this technique was demonstrated in silico and in vitro, and the results show a significant reduction in side-lobe level with over 16 dB improvement in sidelobe to main-lobe energy ratio. Significantly improved contrast was demonstrated with contrast ratio increased by ∼10dB and generalised contrast-to-noise ratio increased by 158% when using the proposed new method compared to existing delay and sum during in vitro studies. The new technique allowed for higher quality 3-D imaging whilst maintaining high frame rate potential.

Anatomic and Functional Imaging Using Row–Column Arrays

“…Often only 8 to 12 emissions are needed for very high quality 2-D SA images, whereas 48 to 96 times 2 emissions are needed for an optimal volumetric image quality. New methods for improving this are currently being investigated [47]. It should also be possible to develop combined sequences, where data is acquired for both anatomic and functional imaging with an optimal image quality at fast volume rates, and where both high and low velocities can be reliably estimated from the same data.…”

“…The preferred method is therefore to use SA imaging, where dynamic transmit focusing is attained by emitting with a number of broadly insonifying beams and by receiving with the orthogonal array elements for dynamic receive focusing. Emitting with waves that are plane in both directions and tilted along the steerable direction, also called ultrafast imaging, has been studied in [37,38] and [47], which, however, seems to give fairly high side-and grating lobes.…”

Three-Dimensional Shear Wave Elastography Using a 2D Row Column Addressing (RCA) Array

“…To address this issue, multiple acquisitions with time averaging can be used to improve the shear SNR, although in practice for human imaging a breath hold may be necessary to avoid motion artifacts. Recently several RCA-based adaptive beamforming methods were proposed to improve the RCA imaging quality by taking advantage of the RCA array layout [ 33 , 34 ]. However, these methods generally involve multiplication between the RC and CR data, which distorts the phase information and is not suitable for detecting shear wave motion.…”

A High-Resolution 3D Ultrasound Imaging System Oriented towards a Specific Application in Breast Cancer Detection Based on a 1 × 256 Ring Array

“…The volume dataset utilized for 3D reconstruction of the breast model in this study was acquired through a layer-by-layer scanning process utilizing a 256-ring array. The quality of the reconstructed ultrasonic tomography image directly impacts the efficacy of the 3D image reconstruction [37]. The time-domain simulation and signal acquisition of 256-ring sensor array sound waves were conducted using the k-Wave acoustic toolbox.…”