Dataset Information

Stolt's f-k migration for plane wave ultrasound imaging.

ABSTRACT: Ultrafast ultrasound is an emerging modality that offers new perspectives and opportunities in medical imaging. Plane wave imaging (PWI) allows one to attain very high frame rates by transmission of planar ultrasound wave-fronts. As a plane wave reaches a given scatterer, the latter becomes a secondary source emitting upward spherical waves and creating a diffraction hyperbola in the received RF signals. To produce an image of the scatterers, all the hyperbolas must be migrated back to their apexes. To perform beamforming of plane wave echo RFs and return high-quality images at high frame rates, we propose a new migration method carried out in the frequency-wavenumber (f-k) domain. The f-k migration for PWI has been adapted from the Stolt migration for seismic imaging. This migration technique is based on the exploding reflector model (ERM), which consists in assuming that all the scatterers explode in concert and become acoustic sources. The classical ERM model, however, is not appropriate for PWI. We showed that the ERM can be made suitable for PWI by a spatial transformation of the hyperbolic traces present in the RF data. In vitro experiments were performed to outline the advantages of PWI with Stolt's f-k migration over the conventional delay-and-sum (DAS) approach. The Stolt's f-k migration was also compared with the Fourier-based method developed by J.-Y. Lu. Our findings show that multi-angle compounded f-k migrated images are of quality similar to those obtained with a stateof- the-art dynamic focusing mode. This remained true even with a very small number of steering angles, thus ensuring a highly competitive frame rate. In addition, the new FFT-based f-k migration provides comparable or better contrast-to-noise ratio and lateral resolution than the Lu's and DAS migration schemes. Matlab codes for the Stolt's f-k migration for PWI are provided.

SUBMITTER: Garcia D

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3970982 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Stolt's f-k migration for plane wave ultrasound imaging.

Garcia Damien D Le Tarnec Louis L Muth Stéphan S Montagnon Emmanuel E Porée Jonathan J Cloutier Guy G

IEEE transactions on ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control 20130901 9

Ultrafast ultrasound is an emerging modality that offers new perspectives and opportunities in medical imaging. Plane wave imaging (PWI) allows one to attain very high frame rates by transmission of planar ultrasound wave-fronts. As a plane wave reaches a given scatterer, the latter becomes a secondary source emitting upward spherical waves and creating a diffraction hyperbola in the received RF signals. To produce an image of the scatterers, all the hyperbolas must be migrated back to their ape ...[more]

PMID: 24626107

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Project description:Contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) cines of focal liver lesions (FLLs) can be quantitatively analyzed to measure tumor perfusion on a pixel-by-pixel basis for diagnostic indication. However, CEUS cines acquired freehand and during free breathing cause nonuniform in-plane and out-of-plane motion from frame to frame. These motions create fluctuations in the time-intensity curves (TICs), reducing the accuracy of quantitative measurements. Out-of-plane motion cannot be corrected by image registration in 2-dimensional CEUS and degrades the quality of in-plane motion correction (IPMC). A 2-tier IPMC strategy and adaptive out-of-plane motion filter (OPMF) are proposed to provide a stable correction of nonuniform motion to reduce the impact of motion on quantitative analyses.A total of 22 cines of FLLs were imaged with dual B-mode and contrast specific imaging to acquire a 3-minute TIC. B-mode images were analyzed for motion, and the motion correction was applied to both B-mode and contrast images. For IPMC, the main reference frame was automatically selected for each cine, and subreference frames were selected in each respiratory cycle and sequentially registered toward the main reference frame. All other frames were sequentially registered toward the local subreference frame. Four OPMFs were developed and tested: subsample normalized correlation (NC), subsample sum of absolute differences, mean frame NC, and histogram. The frames that were most dissimilar to the OPMF reference frame using 1 of the 4 above criteria in each respiratory cycle were adaptively removed by thresholding against the low-pass filter of the similarity curve. Out-of-plane motion filter was quantitatively evaluated by an out-of-plane motion metric (OPMM) that measured normalized variance in the high-pass filtered TIC within the tumor region-of-interest with low OPMM being the goal. Results for IPMC and OPMF were qualitatively evaluated by 2 blinded observers who ranked the motion in the cines before and after various combinations of motion correction steps.Quantitative measurements showed that 2-tier IPMC and OPMF improved imaging stability. With IPMC, the NC B-mode metric increased from 0.504 ± 0.149 to 0.585 ± 0.145 over all cines (P < 0.001). Two-tier IPMC also produced better fits on the contrast-specific TIC than industry standard IPMC techniques did (P < 0.02). In-plane motion correction and OPMF were shown to improve goodness of fit for pixel-by-pixel analysis (P < 0.001). Out-of-plane motion filter reduced variance in the contrast-specific signal as shown by a median decrease of 49.8% in the OPMM. Two-tier IPMC and OPMF were also shown to qualitatively reduce motion. Observers consistently ranked cines with IPMC higher than the same cine before IPMC (P < 0.001) as well as ranked cines with OPMF higher than when they were uncorrected.The 2-tier sequential IPMC and adaptive OPMF significantly reduced motion in 3-minute CEUS cines of FLLs, thereby overcoming the challenges of drift and irregular breathing motion in long cines. The 2-tier IPMC strategy provided stable motion correction tolerant of out-of-plane motion throughout the cine by sequentially registering subreference frames that bypassed the motion cycles, thereby overcoming the lack of a nearly stationary reference point in long cines. Out-of-plane motion filter reduced apparent motion by adaptively removing frames imaged off-plane from the automatically selected OPMF reference frame, thereby tolerating nonuniform breathing motion. Selection of the best OPMF by minimizing OPMM effectively reduced motion under a wide variety of motion patterns applicable to clinical CEUS. These semiautomated processes only required user input for region-of-interest selection and can improve the accuracy of quantitative perfusion measurements.

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Stolt's f-k migration for plane wave ultrasound imaging.

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Stolt's f-k migration for plane wave ultrasound imaging.

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