Method and apparatus for automatic time and/or lateral gain compensation in B-mode ultrasound imaging

摘要

A method and an apparatus for automating time-gain compensation (TGC) and lateral-gain compensation (LGC) based on the B-mode image data. The automatic gain adjustments (6) are aimed at equalizing the mean signal intensities along the axial (for TGC) and/or lateral (for LGC) direction of the image, and suppressing any lateral band (for TGC) and/or sector (for WC) that contains mostly noise. The automatic TGC/LGC adjustment method is implemented (16) in software on a digital scanner and uses a noise model of the entire B-mode processing chain from the beamformer (4) through the B-mode processor (8) to the back-end video processor (12). IMAGE