Title :
A regularized inverse approach to ultrasonic pulse-echo imaging
Author :
Lavarello, Roberto ; Kamalabadi, Farzad ; Brien, William D O, Jr.
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Illinois Univ., Urbana, IL
fDate :
6/1/2006 12:00:00 AM
Abstract :
An inverse-theoretic approach to ultrasonic pulse-echo imaging based on nonquadratic regularization is presented, and its effectiveness is investigated computationally by: 1) evaluating the quality of the reconstruction of speckle-based images as a function of the transmit-receive bandwidth and focal number of the transducer; 2) comparing the reconstructed images with those obtained by using conventional B-mode imaging. The L-curve and the generalized cross-validation methods were evaluated as automatic regularization parameter selection techniques. The inversion using regularization produced better results than conventional B-mode imaging for high signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). A lower bound of 30 dB for the SNR was found for this study, below which several of the image features were lost during the reconstruction process in order to control the distortion due to the noise
Keywords :
biomedical ultrasonics; image reconstruction; medical image processing; noise; 30 dB; L-curve; automatic regularization parameter selection technique; conventional B-mode imaging; generalized cross-validation methods; inverse theory; noise effects; nonquadratic regularization; regularized inverse approach; speckle-based image reconstruction; transducer; transmit-receive bandwidth; ultrasonic pulse-echo imaging; Acoustic imaging; Acoustic pulses; Acoustic scattering; Acoustic transducers; Image reconstruction; Image resolution; Spatial resolution; Speckle; Ultrasonic imaging; Ultrasonic transducers; Inverse problems; pulse-echo imaging; regularization; ultrasound imaging;
Journal_Title :
Medical Imaging, IEEE Transactions on
DOI :
10.1109/TMI.2006.873297
