High Contrast High Frame Rate Medical Ultrasound using Multi Line Acquisition and FDMAS Beamforming

Multi Line Acquisition (MLA) is a well established method for the increased frame rate in cardiac ultrasound imaging, usually used with Delay and Sum (DAS) beamforming. The block-like artifact that arises from MLA can be reduced using interpolation of the data acquired from adjacent transmit beams – a method called synthetic transmit beamforming (STB). Filtered Delay Multiply and Sum (FDMAS) in a novel beamforming method, based on modified autocorrelation of the aperture data, which provides contrast resolution superior to that of DAS. In this research we demonstrate that the combination of FDMAS with STB compensates MLA in a manner superior to their separate use. The images so obtained are of higher frame rate and with higher contrast than Single Line Acquisition (SLA) DAS. This is demonstrated using a tissue phantom and real cardiac data, both acquired in multi transmit mode, providing a 4-fold and 12-fold frame rate gain, respectively, as compared to single transmit SLA setup.