Multi-line transmission combined with minimum variance beamforming in medical ultrasound imaging.

Increasing medical ultrasound imaging frame rate is important in several applications such as cardiac diagnostic imaging, where it is desirable to be able to examine the temporal behavior of fast phases in the cardiac cycle. This is particularly true in 3-D imaging, where current frame rate is still much slower than standard 2-D, B-mode imaging. Recently, a method that increases frame rate, labeled multi-line transmission (MLT), was reintroduced and analyzed.

Multi-line acquisition with minimum variance beamforming in medical ultrasound imaging.

In recent years, multiple-line acquisition (MLA) has been introduced to increase frame rate in cardiac ultrasound medical imaging. However, this method induces blocklike artifacts in the image. One approach suggested, synthetic transmit beamforming (STB), involves overlapping transmit beams which are then interpolated to remove the MLA blocking artifacts.