iMAP Beamforming for High-Quality High Frame Rate Imaging.

We present a statistical interpretation of beamforming to overcome the limitations of standard delay-and-sum (DAS) processing. Both the interference and the signal of interest are viewed as random variables, and the distribution of the signal of interest is exploited to maximize the a posteriori distribution of the aperture signals. In this formulation, the beamformer output is a maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimator of the signal of interest.

Fourier-Domain Beamforming and Structure-Based Reconstruction for Plane-Wave Imaging.

Ultrafast imaging based on coherent plane-wave compounding is one of the most important recent developments in medical ultrasound. It significantly improves the image quality and allows for much faster image acquisition. This technique, however, requires large computational load motivating methods for sampling and processing rate reduction.

FoCUS: Fourier-Based Coded Ultrasound.

Modern imaging systems typically use single-carrier short pulses for transducer excitation. Coded signals together with pulse compression are successfully used in radar and communication to increase the amount of transmitted energy. Previous research verified significant improvement in signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and imaging depth for ultrasound imaging with coded signals.

Sub-Nyquist Sampling and Fourier Domain Beamforming in Volumetric Ultrasound Imaging.

A key step in ultrasound image formation is digital beamforming of signals sampled by several transducer elements placed upon an array. High-resolution digital beamforming introduces the demand for sampling rates significantly higher than the signals' Nyquist rate, which greatly increases the volume of data that must be transmitted from the system's front end. In 3-D ultrasound imaging, 2-D transducer arrays rather than 1-D arrays are used, and more scan lines are needed.

Fourier-domain beamforming: the path to compressed ultrasound imaging.

Sonography techniques use multiple transducer elements for tissue visualization. Signals received at each element are sampled before digital beamforming. The sampling rates required to perform high-resolution digital beamforming are significantly higher than the Nyquist rate of the signal and result in considerable amount of data that must be stored and processed.