Ultrafast high quality ultrasound imaging using k-space beamforming and angular compounding with coherence factor

The high frame rate ultrasonic imaging has enabled new powerful imaging modalities such as Elastography. To achieve high frame rate, the plane-wave transmission and post-acquisition beamforming are used. However, because of lack of transmission focusing, the images obtained using plane-wave transmission suffers from low resolution and low contrast. Therefore, in this paper we proposed a way to improve the beamforming process by using k-space beamforming and angular compounding with coherence factor method. With our new method, high-quality echographic images are obtained without significantly affect the high frame rate capabilities. Tissue-mimicking phantom experimental results of the proposed method have been demonstrated. According to the experimental results, the proposed method is able to reach an image quality comparable to conventional B-mode with only 5 angles of plane-wave insonification.