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Ultrasound B-mode Imaging: Beamforming and Image Formation Techniques

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A special issue of Applied Sciences (ISSN 2076-3417). This special issue belongs to the section "Acoustics and Vibrations".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2018) | Viewed by 74721

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Special Issue Editors

Dr. Giulia Matrone

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Department of Electrical, Computer and Biomedical Engineering, University of Pavia, 27100 Pavia, Italy
Interests: ultrasound medical imaging; beamforming and image reconstruction techniques; signal processing; elastography; high-frame-rate imaging; ultrasound simulations and system-level analyses; microwave imaging for biomedical applications
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Dr. Alessandro Ramalli

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Guest Editor

Laboratory on Cardiovascular Imaging and Dynamics, Department of Cardiovascular Sciences, KU Leuven, 3000 Leuven, Belgium
Interests: ultrasound systems; real-time signal processing; sparse arrays; ultrasound imaging; high frame rate imaging; cardiac imaging; flow imaging; vector Doppler; motion estimation; tissue Doppler imaging; elastography; ultrasound beamforming; pulse compression
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Prof. Dr. Piero Tortoli

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Guest Editor

Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell'Informazione, University of Florence, 350139 Firenze, Italy
Interests: ultrasound systems development; innovative ultrasound imaging methods; ultrasound beamforming; flow and tissue Doppler imaging; vector Doppler; real-time signal processing

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to introduce this Special Issue on “Ultrasound B-Mode Imaging: Beamforming and Image Formation Techniques” to be published in the open access journal Applied Sciences. Among the other diagnostic imaging modalities, ultrasound medical imaging stands out for patient-friendliness, high temporal resolution, low cost, and absence of ionizing radiation. On the other hand, it may still suffer from limited detail level, low signal-to-noise ratio, and narrow field-of-view. In the last decades, new beamforming and image reconstruction techniques have emerged which aim at improving resolution, contrast, and clutter suppression, especially in difficult-to-image patients. Nevertheless, achieving a higher image quality is of the utmost importance in diagnostic ultrasound medical imaging, and further developments are still indispensable. From this point of view, a crucial role can be played by novel beamforming techniques as well as by non-conventional image formation techniques (e.g., advanced transmission strategies, compounding, coded and harmonic imaging, etc.).

This Special Issue wishes to include novel contributions both on ultrasound beamforming and image formation techniques, particularly addressed at improving B-mode image quality and related diagnostic content. We warmly invite authors to collaborate to the Special Issue with original high-quality research or review papers.

Yours faithfully,

Dr. Giulia Matrone
Dr. Alessandro Ramalli
Prof. Piero Tortoli
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Applied Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

Ultrasound medical imaging
Beamforming
Image formation
Transmission strategies
Image compounding
Coded imaging
Super-resolution imaging
Harmonic imaging
Image quality
Signal processing

Published Papers (11 papers)

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Editorial

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4 pages, 195 KiB

Open AccessEditorial

Ultrasound B-Mode Imaging: Beamforming and Image Formation Techniques

by Giulia Matrone, Alessandro Ramalli and Piero Tortoli

Appl. Sci. 2019, 9(12), 2507; https://doi.org/10.3390/app9122507 - 19 Jun 2019

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 3558

Abstract

In the last decade, very active research in the field of ultrasound medical imaging has brought to the development of new advanced image formation techniques and of high-performance systems able to effectively implement them [...] Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ultrasound B-mode Imaging: Beamforming and Image Formation Techniques)

Research

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16 pages, 8350 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Coded Excitation for Crosstalk Suppression in Multi-line Transmit Beamforming: Simulation Study and Experimental Validation

by Ling Tong, Qiong He, Alejandra Ortega, Alessandro Ramalli, Piero Tortoli, Jianwen Luo and Jan D’hooge

Appl. Sci. 2019, 9(3), 486; https://doi.org/10.3390/app9030486 - 31 Jan 2019

Cited by 14 | Viewed by 4104

Abstract

(1) Background: Multi-line transmit (MLT) beamforming has been proposed for fast cardiac ultrasound imaging. While crosstalk between MLT beams could induce artifacts, a Tukey (α = 0.5)-Tukey (α = 0.5) transmit-receive (TT-) apodization can largely—but not completely—suppress this crosstalk. Coded excitation has been proposed for crosstalk suppression, but only for synthetic aperture imaging and multi-focal imaging on linear/convex arrays. The aim of this study was to investigate its (added) value to suppress crosstalk among simultaneously transmitted multi-directional focused beams on a phased array; (2) Methods: One set of two orthogonal Golay codes, as well as one set of two orthogonal chirps, were applied on a two, four, and 6MTL imaging schemes individually. These coded schemes were investigated without and with TT-apodization by both simulation and experiments; and (3) Results: For a 2MLT scheme, without apodization the crosstalk was removed completely using Golay codes, whereas it was only slightly suppressed by chirps. For coded 4MLT and 6MLT schemes, without apodization crosstalk appeared as that of non-apodized 2MLT and 3MLT schemes. TT-apodization was required to suppress the remaining crosstalk. Furthermore, the coded MLT schemes showed better SNR and penetration compared to that of the non-coded ones. (4) Conclusions: The added value of orthogonal coded excitation on MLT crosstalk suppression remains limited, although it could maintain a better SNR. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ultrasound B-mode Imaging: Beamforming and Image Formation Techniques)

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11 pages, 1711 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Ultrasonic Parametrization of Arterial Wall Movements in Low- and High-Risk CVD Subjects

by Monika Makūnaitė, Rytis Jurkonis, Alberto Rodríguez-Martínez, Rūta Jurgaitienė, Vytenis Semaška, Karolina Mėlinytė and Raimondas Kubilius

Appl. Sci. 2019, 9(3), 465; https://doi.org/10.3390/app9030465 - 30 Jan 2019

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 3264

Abstract

This paper shows the results of a preliminary study on the performance of new methods based on ultrasonic images parametrization, to estimate the arterial wall movements used for the evaluation of arterial stiffness, considered to be a predictor of cardiovascular events. The well-known technique of motion tracking in ultrasound image sequences was applied on cine loops scanned from subjects with different risks of suffering from cardiovascular disease (CVD). The motion of arterial walls was traced using displacement signals: Diameter, intima-media thickness (IMT) and longitudinal intima-media (IM) complex movement. The new methods used for the parametrization of the displacement signals were the average value (AV), effective or root mean square (RMS) value, and peak-to-peak motion amplitude estimate. A total of 79 subjects were analyzed in the study with 30 considered at low risk and 49 included in a preventive program for monitoring high CVD risk subjects. The results show a statistically significant difference between healthy volunteers and at-risk patients according to the AV of IMT, RMS values of longitudinal and radial motions and peak-to-peak amplitude of radial motion. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ultrasound B-mode Imaging: Beamforming and Image Formation Techniques)

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11 pages, 6996 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Multi-Perspective Ultrasound Imaging Technology of the Breast with Cylindrical Motion of Linear Arrays

by Chang Liu, Binzhen Zhang, Chenyang Xue, Wendong Zhang, Guojun Zhang and Yijun Cheng

Appl. Sci. 2019, 9(3), 419; https://doi.org/10.3390/app9030419 - 26 Jan 2019

Cited by 10 | Viewed by 2987

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a multi-perspective ultrasound imaging technology with the cylindrical motion of four piezoelectric micromachined ultrasonic transducer (PMUT) rotatable linear arrays. The transducer is configured in a cross shape vertically on the circle with the length of the arrays parallel to the z axis, roughly perpendicular to the chest wall. The transducers surrounded the breast, which achieves non-invasive detection. The electric rotary table drives the PMUT to perform cylindrical scanning. A breast model with a 2 cm mass in the center and six 1-cm superficial masses were used for the experimental analysis. The detection was carried out in a water tank and the working temperature was constant at 32 °C. The breast volume data were acquired by rotating the probe 90° with a 2° interval, which were 256 × 180 A-scan lines. The optimized segmented dynamic focusing technology was used to improve the image quality and data reconstruction was performed. A total of 256 A-scan lines at a constant angle were recombined and 180 A-scan lines were recombined according to the nth element as a dataset, respectively. Combined with ultrasound imaging algorithms, multi-perspective ultrasound imaging was realized including vertical slices, horizontal slices and 3D imaging. The seven masses were detected and the absolute error of the size was approximately 1 mm where even the image of the injection pinhole could be seen. Furthermore, the breast boundary could be seen clearly from the chest wall to the nipple, so the location of the masses was easier to confirm. Therefore, the validity and feasibility of the data reconstruction method and imaging algorithm were verified. It will be beneficial for doctors to be able to comprehensively observe the pathological tissue. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ultrasound B-mode Imaging: Beamforming and Image Formation Techniques)

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11 pages, 5425 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Sound Velocity Estimation and Beamform Correction by Simultaneous Multimodality Imaging with Ultrasound and Magnetic Resonance

by Ken Inagaki, Shimpei Arai, Kengo Namekawa and Iwaki Akiyama

Appl. Sci. 2018, 8(11), 2133; https://doi.org/10.3390/app8112133 - 02 Nov 2018

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 3535

Abstract

Since the sound velocity for medical ultrasound imaging is usually set at 1540 m/s, the ultrasound imaging of a patient with a thick layer of subcutaneous fat is degraded due to variations in the sound velocity. This study proposes a method of compensating for image degradation to correct beamforming. This method uses the sound velocity distribution measured in simultaneous ultrasound (US) and magnetic resonance (MR) imaging. Experiments involving simultaneous imaging of an abdominal phantom and a human neck were conducted to evaluate the feasibility of the proposed method using ultrasound imaging equipment and a 1.5 T MRI scanner. MR-visible fiducial markers were attached to an ultrasound probe that was developed for use in an MRI gantry. The sound velocity distribution was calculated based on the MRI cross section, which was estimated as a corresponding cross section of US imaging using the location of fiducial markers in MRI coordinates. The results of the abdominal phantom and neck imaging indicated that the estimated values of sound velocity distribution allowed beamform correction that yielded compensated images. The feasibility of the proposed method was then evaluated in terms of quantitative improvements in the spatial resolution and signal-to-noise ratio. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ultrasound B-mode Imaging: Beamforming and Image Formation Techniques)

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8 pages, 2197 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Methods for Grating Lobe Suppression in Ultrasound Plane Wave Imaging

by Sua Bae and Tai-Kyong Song

Appl. Sci. 2018, 8(10), 1881; https://doi.org/10.3390/app8101881 - 11 Oct 2018

Cited by 22 | Viewed by 6638

Abstract

Plane wave imaging has been proven to provide transmit beams with a narrow and uniform beam width throughout the imaging depth. The transmit beam pattern, however, exhibits strong grating lobes that have to be suppressed by a tightly focused receive beam pattern. In this paper, we present the conditions of grating lobe occurrence by analyzing the synthetic transmit beam pattern. Based on the analysis, the threshold of the angle interval is presented to completely eliminate grating lobe problems when using uniformly distributed plane wave angles. However, this threshold requires a very small angle interval (or, equivalently, too many angles). We propose the use of non-uniform plane wave angles to disperse the grating lobes in the spatial domain. In this paper, we present an approach using two uniform angle sets with different intervals to generate a non-uniform angle set. The proposed methods were verified by continuous-wave transmit beam patterns and broad-band 2D point spread functions obtained by computer simulations. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ultrasound B-mode Imaging: Beamforming and Image Formation Techniques)

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12 pages, 1982 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A High-Efficiency Super-Resolution Reconstruction Method for Ultrasound Microvascular Imaging

by Wei Guo, Yusheng Tong, Yurong Huang, Yuanyuan Wang and Jinhua Yu

Appl. Sci. 2018, 8(7), 1143; https://doi.org/10.3390/app8071143 - 13 Jul 2018

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 3407

Abstract

The emergence of super-resolution imaging makes it possible to display the microvasculatures clearly using ultrasound imaging, which is of great importance in the early diagnosis of cancer. At present, the super-resolution performance can only be achieved when the sampling signal is long enough (usually more than 10,000 frames). Thus, the imaging time resolution is not suitable for clinical use. In this paper, we proposed a novel super-resolution reconstruction method, which is proved to have a satisfactory resolution using shorter sampling signal sequences. In the microbubble localization step, the integrated form of the 2D Gaussian function is innovatively adopted for image deconvolution in our method, which enhances the accuracy of microbubble positioning. In the trajectory tracking step, for the first time the averaged shifted histogram technique is presented for the visualization, which greatly improves the precision of reconstruction. In vivo experiments on rabbits were conducted to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. Compared to the conventional reconstruction method, our method significantly reduces the Full-Width-at-Half-Maximum (FWHM) by 50% using only 400-frame signals. Besides, there is no significant increase in the running time using the proposed method. Considering its imaging performance and used frame number, the conclusion can be drawn that the proposed method advances the application of super-resolution imaging to the clinical use with a much higher time resolution. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ultrasound B-mode Imaging: Beamforming and Image Formation Techniques)

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17 pages, 6208 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Speckle Reduction on Ultrasound Liver Images Based on a Sparse Representation over a Learned Dictionary

by Mohamed Yaseen Jabarulla and Heung-No Lee

Appl. Sci. 2018, 8(6), 903; https://doi.org/10.3390/app8060903 - 31 May 2018

Cited by 16 | Viewed by 6939

Abstract

Ultrasound images are corrupted with multiplicative noise known as speckle, which reduces the effectiveness of image processing and hampers interpretation. This paper proposes a multiplicative speckle suppression technique for ultrasound liver images, based on a new signal reconstruction model known as sparse representation (SR) over dictionary learning. In the proposed technique, the non-uniform multiplicative signal is first converted into additive noise using an enhanced homomorphic filter. This is followed by pixel-based total variation (TV) regularization and patch-based SR over a dictionary trained using K-singular value decomposition (KSVD). Finally, the split Bregman algorithm is used to solve the optimization problem and estimate the de-speckled image. The simulations performed on both synthetic and clinical ultrasound images for speckle reduction, the proposed technique achieved peak signal-to-noise ratios of 35.537 dB for the dictionary trained on noisy image patches and 35.033 dB for the dictionary trained using a set of reference ultrasound image patches. Further, the evaluation results show that the proposed method performs better than other state-of-the-art denoising algorithms in terms of both peak signal-to-noise ratio and subjective visual quality assessment. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ultrasound B-mode Imaging: Beamforming and Image Formation Techniques)

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15 pages, 1852 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Nonlinear Beamformer Based on p-th Root Compression—Application to Plane Wave Ultrasound Imaging

by Maxime Polichetti, François Varray, Jean-Christophe Béra, Christian Cachard and Barbara Nicolas

Appl. Sci. 2018, 8(4), 599; https://doi.org/10.3390/app8040599 - 11 Apr 2018

Cited by 44 | Viewed by 6112

Abstract

Ultrafast medical ultrasound imaging is necessary for 3D and 4D ultrasound imaging, and it can also achieve high temporal resolution (thousands of frames per second) for monitoring of transient biological phenomena. However, reaching such frame rates involves reduction of image quality compared with that obtained with conventional ultrasound imaging, since the latter requires each image line to be reconstructed separately with a thin ultrasonic focused beam. There are many techniques to simultaneously acquire several image lines, although at the expense of resolution and contrast, due to interference from echoes from the whole medium. In this paper, a nonlinear beamformer is applied to plane wave imaging to improve resolution and contrast of ultrasound images. The method consists of the introduction of nonlinear operations in the conventional delay-and-sum (DAS) beamforming algorithm. To recover the value of each pixel, the raw radiofrequency signals are first dynamically focused and summed on the plane wave dimension. Then, their amplitudes are compressed using the signed

p^{t h}

root. After summing on the element dimension, the signed p-power is applied to restore the original dimensionality in volts. Finally, a band-pass filter is used to remove artificial harmonics introduced by these nonlinear operations. The proposed method is referred to as p-DAS, and it has been tested here on numerical and experimental data from the open access platform of the Plane wave Imaging Challenge in Medical UltraSound (PICMUS). This study demonstrates that p-DAS achieves better resolution and artifact rejection than the conventional DAS (for

p = 2

with eleven plane wave imaging on experimental phantoms, the lateral resolution is improved by

21 %

, and contrast ratio (CR) by

59 %

). However, like many coherence-based beamformers, it tends to distort the conventional speckle structure (contrast-to-noise-ratio (CNR) decreased by

45 %

). It is demonstrated that p-DAS, for

p = 2

, is very similar to the nonlinear filtered-delay-multiply-and-sum (FDMAS) beamforming, but also that its impact on image quality can be tuned changing the value of p. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ultrasound B-mode Imaging: Beamforming and Image Formation Techniques)

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15 pages, 11941 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Spatial Coherence of Backscattered Signals in Multi-Line Transmit Ultrasound Imaging and Its Effect on Short-Lag Filtered-Delay Multiply and Sum Beamforming

by Giulia Matrone and Alessandro Ramalli

Appl. Sci. 2018, 8(4), 486; https://doi.org/10.3390/app8040486 - 23 Mar 2018

Cited by 31 | Viewed by 4815

Abstract

In Multi-Line Transmission (MLT), high frame-rate ultrasound imaging is achieved by the simultaneous transmission of multiple focused beams along different directions, which unfortunately generates unwanted artifacts in the image due to inter-beam crosstalk. The Filtered-Delay Multiply and Sum (F-DMAS) beamformer, a non-linear spatial-coherence (SC)-based algorithm, was demonstrated to successfully reduce such artifacts, improving the spatial resolution at the same time. In this paper, we aim to provide further insights on the working principle and performance of F-DMAS beamforming in MLT imaging. First, we carry out an analytical study to analyze the behavior and trend of backscattered signals SC in MLT images, when the number of simultaneously transmitted beams and/or their angular spacing change. We then reconsider the F-DMAS algorithm proposing the “short-lag F-DMAS” formulation, in order to limit the maximum lag of signals used for the SC computation on which the beamformer is based. Therefore, we investigate in simulations how the performance of short-lag F-DMAS varies along with the maximum lag in the different MLT configurations considered. Finally, we establish a relation between the obtained results and the signals SC trend. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ultrasound B-mode Imaging: Beamforming and Image Formation Techniques)

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Review

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15 pages, 1434 KiB

Open AccessReview

Practical Guide to Ultrasound Beam Forming: Beam Pattern and Image Reconstruction Analysis

by Libertario Demi

Appl. Sci. 2018, 8(9), 1544; https://doi.org/10.3390/app8091544 - 03 Sep 2018

Cited by 36 | Viewed by 27370

Abstract

Starting from key ultrasound imaging features such as spatial and temporal resolution, contrast, penetration depth, array aperture, and field-of-view (FOV) size, the reader will be guided through the pros and cons of the main ultrasound beam-forming techniques. The technicalities and the rationality behind the different driving schemes and reconstruction modalities will be reviewed, highlighting the requirements for their implementation and their suitability for specific applications. Techniques such as multi-line acquisition (MLA), multi-line transmission (MLT), plane and diverging wave imaging, and synthetic aperture will be discussed, as well as more recent beam-forming modalities. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ultrasound B-mode Imaging: Beamforming and Image Formation Techniques)

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