35 research outputs found
Eigenspace-Based Minimum Variance Combined with Delay Multiply and Sum Beamformer: Application to Linear-Array Photoacoustic Imaging
In Photoacoustic imaging, Delay-and-Sum (DAS) algorithm is the most commonly
used beamformer. However, it leads to a low resolution and high level of
sidelobes. Delay-Multiply-and-Sum (DMAS) was introduced to provide lower
sidelobes compared to DAS. In this paper, to improve the resolution and
sidelobes of DMAS, a novel beamformer is introduced using Eigenspace-Based
Minimum Variance (EIBMV) method combined with DMAS, namely EIBMV-DMAS. It is
shown that expanding the DMAS algebra leads to several terms which can be
interpreted as DAS. Using the EIBMV adaptive beamforming instead of the
existing DAS (inside the DMAS algebra expansion) is proposed to improve the
image quality. EIBMV-DMAS is evaluated numerically and experimentally. It is
shown that EIBMV-DMAS outperforms DAS, DMAS and EIBMV in terms of resolution
and sidelobes. In particular, at the depth of 11 mm of the experimental images,
EIBMV-DMAS results in about 113 dB and 50 dB sidelobe reduction, compared to
DMAS and EIBMV, respectively. At the depth of 7 mm, for the experimental
images, the quantitative results indicate that EIBMV-DMAS leads to improvement
in Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) of about 75% and 34%, compared to DMAS and
EIBMV, respectively.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1709.0796
Linear-Array Photoacoustic Imaging Using Minimum Variance-Based Delay Multiply and Sum Adaptive Beamforming Algorithm
In Photoacoustic imaging (PA), Delay-and-Sum (DAS) beamformer is a common
beamforming algorithm having a simple implementation. However, it results in a
poor resolution and high sidelobes. To address these challenges, a new
algorithm namely Delay-Multiply-and-Sum (DMAS) was introduced having lower
sidelobes compared to DAS. To improve the resolution of DMAS, a novel
beamformer is introduced using Minimum Variance (MV) adaptive beamforming
combined with DMAS, so-called Minimum Variance-Based DMAS (MVB-DMAS). It is
shown that expanding the DMAS equation results in multiple terms representing a
DAS algebra. It is proposed to use the MV adaptive beamformer instead of the
existing DAS. MVB-DMAS is evaluated numerically and experimentally. In
particular, at the depth of 45 mm MVB-DMAS results in about 31 dB, 18 dB and 8
dB sidelobes reduction compared to DAS, MV and DMAS, respectively. The
quantitative results of the simulations show that MVB-DMAS leads to improvement
in full-width-half-maximum about 96 %, 94 % and 45 % and signal-to-noise ratio
about 89 %, 15 % and 35 % compared to DAS, DMAS, MV, respectively. In
particular, at the depth of 33 mm of the experimental images, MVB-DMAS results
in about 20 dB sidelobes reduction in comparison with other beamformers.Comment: This is the final version of this paper, which is accepted in the
"Journal of Biomedical Optics". Compared to previous versions, this version
contains more experiments and evaluatio
Real-time delay-multiply-and-sum beamforming with coherence factor for in vivo clinical photoacoustic imaging of humans
In the clinical photoacoustic (PA) imaging, ultrasound (US) array transducers are typically used to provide B-mode images in real-time. To form a B-mode image, delay-and-sum (DAS) beamforming algorithm is the most commonly used algorithm because of its ease of implementation. However, this algorithm suffers from low image resolution and low contrast drawbacks. To address this issue, delay-multiply-and-sum (DMAS) beamforming algorithm has been developed to provide enhanced image quality with higher contrast, and narrower main lobe compared but has limitations on the imaging speed for clinical applications. In this paper, we present an enhanced real-time DMAS algorithm with modified coherence factor (CF) for clinical PA imaging of humans in vivo. Our algorithm improves the lateral resolution and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of original DMAS beam-former by suppressing the background noise and side lobes using the coherence of received signals. We optimized the computations of the proposed DMAS with CF (DMAS-CF) to achieve real-time frame rate imaging on a graphics processing unit (GPU). To evaluate the proposed algorithm, we implemented DAS and DMAS with/without CF on a clinical US/PA imaging system and quantitatively assessed their processing speed and image quality. The processing time to reconstruct one B-mode image using DAS, DAS with CF (DAS-CF), DMAS, and DMAS-CF algorithms was 7.5, 7.6, 11.1, and 11.3 ms, respectively, all achieving the real-time imaging frame rate. In terms of the image quality, the proposed DMAS-CF algorithm improved the lateral resolution and SNR by 55.4% and 93.6 dB, respectively, compared to the DAS algorithm in the phantom imaging experiments. We believe the proposed DMAS-CF algorithm and its real-time implementation contributes significantly to the improvement of imaging quality of clinical US/PA imaging system.11Ysciescopu