A new method for high frame-rate and high quality medical imaging

Contrast resolution and detail resolution are two key measures of ultrasound diagnostic image quality. Besides high imaging quality, the frame-rate is another important factor for research on tissue motion mechanism and diagnosis of pathological changes. In this paper, based on the principles of phased ultrasound beamforming, we introduce a new method which can not only improve frame-rate but also enhance image quality. Mainlobe width controlling and sidelobes suppressing are employed to improve image resolution, fewer and wider transmit beams combined with four parallel receive beams is used to increase the frame-rate by a factor of four. Simulation results demonstrate that the image quality using this method is much better than conventional beamformed image of wired targets, such as Hanning Window weighting and Rectangle Window weighting. This method also has the advantages of possibility of real time implementation.