3-D contrast enhanced ultrasound imaging of an in vivo chicken embryo with a sparse array and deep learning based adaptive beamforming

3-D contrast enhanced ultrasound imaging of an in vivo chicken embryo with a sparse array and deep learning based adaptive beamforming

Ossenkoppele, B.W. (TU Delft ImPhys/Imaging Physics; TU Delft ImPhys/Medical Imaging)
Wei, Luxi (Erasmus MC)
Luijten, Ben (Eindhoven University of Technology)
Vos, H.J. (TU Delft ImPhys/Medical Imaging; Erasmus MC)
de Jong, N. (TU Delft ImPhys/Medical Imaging; Erasmus MC)
Van Sloun, Ruud J.G. (Eindhoven University of Technology; Philips Research)
Verweij, M.D. (TU Delft ImPhys/Medical Imaging; Erasmus MC)

ImPhys/Imaging Physics

2022

3-D contrast enhanced ultrasound enables better visualization of inherently 3-D vascular geometries compared to an intersecting plane. Additionally, it would allow the application of motion correction techniques for all directions. Both contrast detection and motion correction work better on high-frame rate data. However high-frame rate 3-D ultrasound imaging with dense matrix arrays is challenging to realize. Sparse arrays alleviate some of the limitations in cable count and data rate that fully populated arrays encounter, but their increased level of secondary lobes negatively impacts image contrast. Meanwhile the use of unfocused transmit beams needed to achieve high-frame rates negatively impacts resolution. Here we propose to use adaptive beamforming by deep learning (ABLE) to improve the image quality of contrast enhanced ultrasound images acquired with a sparse spiral array. We train the neural network on simulated data and evaluate simulated images and in vivo images of an ex ovo chicken embryo. ABLE improved resolution compared to delay-and-sum (DAS) and spatial coherence (SC) beamforming on the simulated and in vivo data. The qualitative improvements persist after histogram matching, indicating that the image quality improvement of the ABLE images was not purely due to dynamic range stretching.

beamforming
contrast enhanced ultrasound
deep learning
sparse array
spiral array

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:4ae5e757-eaa2-4aae-825a-ddca25448182

https://doi.org/10.1109/IUS54386.2022.9957383

IEEE

2023-07-01

9781665466578

IUS 2022 - IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium

2022 IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium, IUS 2022, 2022-10-10 → 2022-10-13, Venice, Italy

IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium, IUS, 1948-5719, 2022-October

Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.

Institutional Repository

conference paper

© 2022 B.W. Ossenkoppele, Luxi Wei, Ben Luijten, H.J. Vos, N. de Jong, Ruud J.G. Van Sloun, M.D. Verweij