Template Matching Beamformer in Medical Ultrasound Imaging System

Abstract

Beamforming is a key step in medical ultrasound system. Compared with the dealy and sum (DAS) beamforming, the subarray average delay multiply and sum (SA-DMAS) beamforming has betters performance in image quality, however, the processing time is still longer for real-time imaging. In this paper, we proposed a template matching(TM) method based on SADMAS beamforming. In the proposed method, we reanalysised the SA-DMAS beamforming, and expressed it as a point multiplication of the covariance matrix and its corresponding weight matrix. The weight matrix can be calculated in advance in the case of different array and subarray elements. By doing this, the processing time of beamforming can be reduced compared with SA-DMAS beamforming. Simulation was performed to evaluate the proposed method. Compared with SA-DMAS beamforming, the results indicate that TM generates a 55.22% lower advantage at full width at half-maximum(FWHM), a 46.63% less advantage at processing time. This demonstrates that the proposed method can maintain the performance of imaging and reducing the processing time.