A Novel Technique for Estimation and Detection of Specular Reflections Leveraging High Frame Rate Ultrasound Imaging

Abstract

The clinical interpretability of specular interfaces in ultrasound (US) imaging is heavily influenced by the anatomical knowledge of the operator and the transmit–receive beamforming employed for imaging. The violation of the conventional diffuse assumptions by highly directive specular reflections makes their detection challenging which increases the cognitive burden of operators in tissue characterization or calibrating the beam steering/transducer to ensure their detection. However, the areas for improved operator assistance and related workflow in this regard remain largely unexplored. This work proposes a novel method called tiered subaperture (SA) directivity indexing, which employs a SA-level measurement of energy in the reflections through multiangle plane wave transmissions to automatically identify the directivity of specular reflections. The reflection directivity is vectorized and visually fed as a characterized colored image to the operator to distinguish the specular patterns in the US data. The technique is illustrated for clinical use cases such as needle tracking in guided interventional procedures, anisotropy in MSK US, and bone fracture monitoring. The proposed method improves retention, enables freehand scans, and augmentation of hand–eye coordination for the operators for tissue characterization, beamforming, and transducer calibration thus aiding quicker diagnosis by saving procedure times.