Double Stage Delay Multiply and Sum Beamforming Algorithm Applied to Ultrasound Medical Imaging

TL;DR

This paper introduces a Double Stage DMAS beamforming algorithm for ultrasound imaging, significantly reducing sidelobes and improving image quality metrics over traditional DMAS.

Contribution

The paper proposes a novel DS-DMAS algorithm that enhances ultrasound image quality by expanding DMAS and replacing DAS algebra within it.

Findings

25% lower sidelobe levels with DS-DMAS

23% improvement in Signal-to-Noise Ratio

43% enhancement in Contrast Ratio

Abstract

In Ultrasound (US) imaging, Delay and Sum (DAS) is the most common beamformer, but it leads to low quality images. Delay Multiply and Sum (DMAS) was introduced to address this problem. However, the reconstructed images using DMAS still suffer from level of sidelobes and low noise suppression. In this paper, a novel beamforming algorithm is introduced based on the expansion of DMAS formula. It is shown that there is a DAS algebra inside the expansion, and it is proposed to use DMAS instead of the DAS algebra. The introduced method, namely Double Stage DMAS (DS-DMAS), is evaluated numerically and experimentally. The quantitative results indicate that DS-DMAS results in about 25% lower level of sidelobes compared to DMAS. Moreover, the introduced method leads to 23%, 22% and 43% improvement in Signal-to-Noise Ratio, Full-Width-Half-Maximum and Contrast Ratio, respectively, in comparison with DMAS beamformer.