Abstract

In medical ultrasound B-mode imaging, by increasing the image contrast, spatial and temporal resolution, it will help to improve the diagnostic and decision making process. Previously the unsharp masking (UM) techniques have been successfully implemented for digital image processing as edge enhancement techniques. However, the outcomes of the method are limited and influenced by the image formats conversion and lower dynamic range. Moreover the conventional UM technique sensitive to noise due to the presence of linear high pass filter which cannot discriminate signal from noise. Furthermore, the technique only enhances the image in darker compared to lighter regions. To overcome those issues, a new improved UM method compatible with ultrasound B-mode imaging was applied to compound plane wave imaging (CPWI). The received radio frequency (RF) signal was beamformed with delay and sum (DAS) and filtered delay and sum (FDMAS). Results show that the proposed techniques are not only able to improve the image contrast but also the spatial resolution. The UM technique manages to improve the B-mode image lateral resolution (LR) by 18.36% and 10.25% as well as reduced the peak side lobes (PSL) by 16.67 dB and 21.24 dB on DAS and FDMAS respectively when compounded with CPWI, N=13. For the same number of compounding and beamforming order, the image contrast ratio (CR) has been improved by 10.35 dB and 7.39 dB accordingly.

Highlights

  • Ultrasound B-mode images are prone to clutter noise that often obscures anechoic regions such as cysts, carotid artery and blood vessels

  • Clutter noise can be reduced by using filtering, beamforming and post processing techniques such as contrast enhanced delay and sum (CEDAS), dual apodization with cross correlation (DAX), minimum variance (MV) and compound plane wave imaging (CPWI) [1]–[4]

  • While CPWI with DAS were only able to reduce the clutter noise to a certain extent at the cost of reducing the temporal resolution. To overcome those constraints, a filtering technique known as unsharp masking (UM) which has been applied in digital image processing has been explored in this work

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Summary

Introduction

Ultrasound B-mode images are prone to clutter noise that often obscures anechoic regions such as cysts, carotid artery and blood vessels. CEDAS and DAX only manage to reduce the clutter noise without improving the image spatial resolution. While CPWI with DAS were only able to reduce the clutter noise to a certain extent at the cost of reducing the temporal resolution. To overcome those constraints, a filtering technique known as unsharp masking (UM) which has been applied in digital image processing has been explored in this work. The main objective of this work is to reduce the clutter noise and improve the spatial resolution in ultrasound B-mode image

Objectives
Methods
Results

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