The iterative adaptive approach in medical ultrasound imaging

Many medical ultrasound imaging systems are based on sweeping the image plane with a set of narrow beams. Usually, the returning echo from each of these beams is used to form one or a few azimuthal image samples. We model, for each radial distance, jointly the full azimuthal scanline. The model consists of the amplitudes of a set of densely placed potential reflectors (or scatterers), cf. sparse signal representation. To fit the model, we apply the iterative adaptive approach (IAA) on data formed by a sequenced time delay and phase shift. The performance of the IAA in combination with our time-delayed and phase-shifted data are studied on both simulated data of scenes consisting of point targets and hollow cyst-like structures, and recorded ultrasound phantom data from a specially adapted commercially available scanner. The results show that the proposed IAA is more capable of resolving point targets and gives better defined and more geometrically correct cyst-like structures in speckle images compared with the conventional delay-and-sum (DAS) approach. Compared with a Capon beamformer, the IAA showed an improved rendering of cyst-like structures and a similar point-target resolvability. Unlike the Capon beamformer, the IAA has no user parameters and seems unaffected by signal cancellation. The disadvantage of the IAA is a high computational load.