A set of NxM signals are acquired (40) from an object, where N is the number of array (12) elements and M corresponds to variations in data acquisition and/or processing parameters. The parameters include transmit aperture functions, transmit waveforms, receive aperture functions, and receive filtering functions in space and/or time. A coherence factor is computed (52) as a ratio of the energy of the coherent sum (44) to the energy of the at-least-partially incoherent sum (46) of channel or image signals acquired with at least one different parameter. Partial beamformed data may be used for channel coherence calculation. For image domain coherence, a component image (40) is formed for each different transmit beam or receive aperture function, and a coherence factor image is computed using the set of component images. The coherence factor image is displayed or used to modify or blend other images formed of the same region.
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