title: Thomson's multitaper approach combined with coherent plane-wave compounding to reduce speckle in ultrasound imaging.
abstract: In ultrasound imaging, the speckle pattern limits the image quality. Spatial and frequency compounding are commonly used to reduce speckle noise or improve the contrast. Although recent implementations can preserve a frame rate that is compatible with real-time imaging (e.g., synthetic aperture compounding), most classic compounding techniques are based on the coherent combination of several radiofrequency images from the same investigated area, which reduces the frame rate. Furthermore, Thomson's multitaper approach aims to smooth the speckle by incoherently combining the obtained B-mode images after applying different apodization windows on the same original data. With only one acquisition, the frame rate remains high, but the spatial resolution is decreased. To improve the resolution and contrast while reducing the speckle noise, this paper proposes combining the coherent plane-wave compounding technique (CPWC) with Thomson's multitaper method. The resulting multitaper coherent plane-wave compounding (MCPWC) takes advantage of coherent and incoherent approaches. Simulations and experimental results demonstrate that in terms of the signal-to-noise ratio, contrast, and resolution, the image quality is increased using plane wave emissions at approximately ten steering angles with three Thomson's tapers. Outside the focal area, the lateral resolution is improved by a factor of 2, and the contrast is increased by approximately 2dB compared with images obtained using a single focalization technique and Thomson's multitaper approach.
authors.affiliation: CREATIS, Université de Lyon, INSA-Lyon, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, CNRS UMR 5220, Inserm U630, Villeurbanne, France; Microelectronics Systems Design Laboratory, Information Engineering Department, Università di Firenze, Italy. Electronic address: matthieu.toulemonde@creatis.insa-lyon.fr.
authors.forename: Matthieu
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Toulemonde
authors.affiliation: CREATIS, Université de Lyon, INSA-Lyon, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, CNRS UMR 5220, Inserm U630, Villeurbanne, France.
authors.forename: Olivier
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Basset
authors.affiliation: Microelectronics Systems Design Laboratory, Information Engineering Department, Università di Firenze, Italy.
authors.forename: Piero
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Tortoli
authors.affiliation: CREATIS, Université de Lyon, INSA-Lyon, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, CNRS UMR 5220, Inserm U630, Villeurbanne, France.
authors.forename: Christian
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Cachard
keywords: Coherent plane-wave compounding; Speckle; Thomson’s multitaper; Ultrasound imaging