Ultrasound imaging is a low-cost, safe and mobile imaging modality, which explains in part its widespread use in clinical Radiology. Although 2D anatomical ultrasound imaging appears very fast, generating images as fast as the eye can see them, frame rates can be severely degraded for more elaborate scans. During the resection and/or ablation of liver lesions, visualizing the tumor(s) in relation to the 3D vasculature in real- time would be highly desirable, increasing the odds of removing/ablating all tumor tissues while sparing important vessels. But the acquisition of large amounts of 3D information would normally degrade frame rates to levels unacceptable for image guidance. We propose a combination of spatial and temporal encoding schemes capable of accelerating by several-fold the acquisition rate of ultrasound images, allowing elaborate ultrasound images to be obtained at high frame rates. The anatomy of interest is probed in multiple directions at a time using multiple superposed beams, reducing imaging time by several-fold compared to conventional acquisitions where the object is probed in a single direction at a time. Based on the raw signal received from all overlapped beams, signals from individual beams can be recovered at the reconstruction stage using our proposed spatial and temporal algorithms. Preliminary results from simulated and experimental acoustic phantoms were obtained where imaging speed was increased by up to 32-fold.
Ultrasound imaging is a particularly widespread medical imaging modality, due in part to its safety and low cost. Because it is fast, generating images as fast as the human eye can see them, ultrasound imaging is often used to guide procedures, such as liver resections and tumor ablations. More elaborate ultrasound images, where tumor(s) could be seen in 3D in conjunction to the vascular bed, would be helpful toward safely removing all lesions and preserving important vessels but would lead to unacceptably low frame rates. The present project proposes an approach to speed-up by several-fold the image acquisition process in ultrasound imaging, enabling 3D and vascular information to be obtained with high frame rates. Preliminary results were obtained where imaging speed was increased by up to 32-fold.
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