The Spectrum-Beamformer for Conventional B-Mode Ultrasound Imaging System: Principle, Validation, and Robustness

Fast and efficient imaging techniques are important for real-time ultrasound imaging. The delay and sum (DAS) beamformer is the most widely-used strategy in focused ultrasound imaging (FUI) modality. However, calculating the time delays and coherently summing the amplitude response in DAS is computationally expensive and generally require a high-performance processor to realize real-time processing. In this study, an efficient spectrum beamformer, namely full-matrix capture (FMC)-stolt, is proposed in FUI system with a linear phased array. The imaging performance of FMC-stolt was validated with the point-scatter simulation and in vitro point and cyst phantoms, and then compared with that of five beamformers, that is, Multiline acquisition (MLA), retrospective transmit beamforming (RTB) in the FUI modality, as well as DAS, Garcia's frequency-wavenumber (f-k), Lu's f-k in the coherent plane wave compounding imaging (CPWCI) modality, under specific conditions. We show that the imaging performance of FMC-stolt is better than MLA-DAS in non-transmit-focal regions, and comparable with RTB-DAS at all imaging depths. FMC-stolt also shows better discontinuity alleviation than MLA and RTB. In addition, FMC-stolt has similar imaging characteristics (e.g., off-axis resolution, computational cost) as the f-k beamformers. The computational complexity and actual computational time indicate that FMC-stolt is comparable to Garcia's f-k, Lu's f-k, and faster than RTB and CPWCI-DAS if the transmitting numbers are close for FUI and CPWCI. The study demonstrates that the proposed FMC-stolt could achieve good reconstruction speed while preserving high-quality images and thus provide a choice for software beamforming for conventional B-mode ultrasound imaging, especially for hand-held devices with limited performance processors.