Efficient Strategies for Estimating the Spatial Coherence of Backscatter

Overview

Journal IEEE Trans Ultrason Ferroelectr Freq Control

Specialties Biomedical Engineering
Nuclear Medicine

Date 2016 Dec 4

PMID 27913342

Citations 26

Authors

Dongwoon Hyun

Anna Lisa C Crowley

Jeremy J Dahl

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

The spatial coherence of ultrasound backscatter has been proposed to reduce clutter in medical imaging, to measure the anisotropy of the scattering source, and to improve the detection of blood flow. These techniques rely on correlation estimates that are obtained using computationally expensive strategies. In this paper, we assess the existing spatial coherence estimation methods and propose three computationally efficient modifications: a reduced kernel, a downsampled receive aperture, and the use of an ensemble correlation coefficient. The proposed methods are implemented in simulation and in vivo studies. Reducing the kernel to a single sample improved computational throughput and improved axial resolution. Downsampling the receive aperture was found to have negligible effect on estimator variance, and improved computational throughput by an order of magnitude for a downsample factor of 4. The ensemble correlation estimator demonstrated lower variance than the currently used average correlation. Combining the three methods, the throughput was improved 105-fold in simulation with a downsample factor of 4- and 20-fold in vivo with a downsample factor of 2.

Citing Articles

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Spatial Coherence Adaptive Clutter Filtering in Color Flow Imaging-Part I: Simulation Studies.

Long W, Bradway D, Ahmed R, Long J, Trahey G IEEE Open J Ultrason Ferroelectr Freq Control. 2023; 2:106-118.

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Spatial Coherence Adaptive Clutter Filtering in Color Flow Imaging-Part II: Phantom and Experiments.

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Separation of mainlobe and sidelobe contributions to B-mode ultrasound images based on the aperture spectrum.

Ali R, Mitcham T, Brickson L, Hu W, Doyley M, Rubens D J Med Imaging (Bellingham). 2022; 9(6):067001.

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