FORWARD-BACKWARD MINIMUM VARIANCE BEAMFORMING COMBINED WITH COHERENCE WEIGHTING APPLIED TO ULTRASOUND IMAGING

摘要

Currently, the delay-and-sum (DAS) algorithm is used as a standard technique in ultrasound beamforming. The adaptive ultrasound beamformer, however, shows its superiority over DAS, the traditional beam former, in many ways. In this paper, we proposed a novel adaptive beamformer that combined the minimum variance (MV) adaptive beamformer together with coherence weighting factor (CF) and forward-backward averaging (FB) in medical ultrasound imaging. We called it the forward-backward averaging coherence weighting minimum variance (FB-CFMV) beamformer. Based on SonixRP system, we collected the pre-beamforming RF raw data to evaluate the performance of the beamformer. The results showed that the new beamformer could improve both resolution and contrast of the images while compared with DAS or MV algorithm.