KEYWORDS: 3D image processing, Ultrasonography, 3D modeling, Data conversion, Data acquisition, Chemical elements, Data modeling, 3D scanning, Imaging systems, Image quality
For multi-planar reconstruction in 3D ultrasound imaging, direct and separable 3D scan conversion (SC) have been used for transforming the ultrasound data acquired in the 3D polar coordinate system to the 3D Cartesian coordinate system. These 3D SC methods can visualize an arbitrary plane for 3D ultrasound volume data. However, they suffer from blurring and blocking artifacts due to resampling during SC. In this paper, a new multi-planar reconstruction method based on voxel based beamforming (VBF) is proposed for reducing blurring and blocking artifacts. In VBF, unlike direct and separable 3D SC, each voxel on an arbitrary imaging plane is directly reconstructed by applying the focusing delay to radio-frequency (RF) data so that the blurring and blocking artifacts can be removed. From the phantom study, the proposed VBF method showed the higher contrast and less blurring compared to the separable and direct 3D SC methods. This result is consistent with the measured information entropy contrast (IEC) values, i.e., 98.9 vs. 42.0 vs. 47.9, respectively. In addition, the 3D SC methods and VBF method were implemented on a high-end GPU by using CUDA programming. The execution times for the VBF and direct 3D SC methods are 1656.1ms, 1633.3ms and 1631.4ms, which are I/O bounded. These results indicate that the proposed VBF method can improve image quality of 3D ultrasound B-mode imaging by removing blurring and blocking artifacts associated with 3D scan conversion and show the feasibility of pseudo-real-time operation.
Speckle, shown as a granular pattern, considerably degrades the image quality of ultrasound B-mode imaging and lowers the performance of image segmentation and registration techniques. Thus, speckle reduction while preserving the tissue structure (e.g., edges and boundaries of lesions) is important for ultrasound B-mode imaging. In this paper, a new approach for speckle reduction and edge enhancement based on laplacian pyramid nonlinear diffusion and homomorphic filtering (LPNDHF) is proposed for ultrasound B-mode imaging. In LPNDHF, nonlinear diffusion with a weighting factor is applied in multi-scale domain (i.e., laplacian pyramid) for effectively suppressing the speckle. In addition, in order to overcome the drawback from the previous LPND method, i.e., blurred edges, homomorphic filtering for edge and contrast enhancement is also applied from a finer scale to a coarser scale. From the simulation study, the proposed LPNDHF method showed the higher edge preservation and structure similarity values compared to the LPND and LPND with shock filtering (LPNDSF). Also, the LPNDHF provided the higher CNR values compared to LPND and LPNDSF, i.e., 5.02 vs. 3.66 and 2.91, respectively. From the tissue mimicking phantom study, the similar improvement in CNR was achieved from the LPNDHF over LPND and LPNDSF, i.e., 2.35 vs. 1.83 and 1.30. Moreover, the consistent results were obtained with the in vivo abdominal study. These preliminary results demonstrate that the proposed LPNDHF can improve the image quality of ultrasound B-mode imaging by increasing contrast and enhancing the specific signal details while effectively suppressing speckle.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.