title: Enhance contrast in PCA based beamformers using smoothing kernel.
abstract: The contrast and resolution have trade-off in medical ultrasound imaging. Most of adaptive beamformer can enhance the imaging resolution significantly but not improve the contrast at the same time. The principal component analysis (PCA) based beamformers such as the eigenspace-based minimum variance (ESBMV) beamformer provide a good imaging resolution. Neighbors of the focal point include the common noise, interface and signal components. Echo signal of the neighbor points can be used to suppress the noise and extract the signal component of the focal point. Based on this idea, in order to improve the quality of PCA based beamformers both in the imaging contrast and resolution, a novel beamforming method is proposed. This proposed beamformer utilizes a kernel to select neighbor points. The number of eigenvectors is estimated by using any PCA method. Then the number of selected eigenvectors for each focal point is compared with the number of selected eigenvectors of its neighbor points and is changed to a new value. The selected eigenvectors of the covariance matrix is used to construct the signal subspace. The estimated signal subspace is projected onto the minimum variance (MV) weight vector to calculate the desire weight vector. Results of experiments show that the proposed beamformer can improve the imaging contrast significantly while keeping the resolution quality similar to ESBMV beamformer.
authors.affiliation: Department of Electronic Engineering, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China.
authors.forename: Saeid
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Aliabadi
authors.affiliation: Department of Electronic Engineering, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China.|Key laboratory of Medical Imaging Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention of Shanghai, Shanghai 200433, China.
authors.forename: Jinhua
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.affiliation: Department of Electronic Engineering, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China.|Key laboratory of Medical Imaging Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention of Shanghai, Shanghai 200433, China.
authors.forename: Yuanyuan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wang
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D003198:Computer Simulation; D003627:Data Interpretation, Statistical; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000379:methods*; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D015233:Models, Statistical; D010363:Pattern Recognition, Automated / Q000379:methods*; D019047:Phantoms, Imaging; D025341:Principal Component Analysis; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; D014463:Ultrasonography / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*
keywords: Ultrasound imaging; beamforming; eigenvalue; minimum variance