Shaswary Elyas, Xu Yuan, Tavakkoli Jahan
Department of Physics, Ryerson University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Department of Physics, Ryerson University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Ultrasonics. 2016 Jul;69:11-8. doi: 10.1016/j.ultras.2016.03.002. Epub 2016 Mar 9.
Time-delay estimation has countless applications in ultrasound medical imaging. Previously, we proposed a new time-delay estimation algorithm, which was based on the summation of the sign function to compute the time-delay estimate (Shaswary et al., 2015). We reported that the proposed algorithm performs similar to normalized cross-correlation (NCC) and sum squared differences (SSD) algorithms, even though it was significantly more computationally efficient. In this paper, we study the performance of the proposed algorithm using statistical analysis and image quality analysis in ultrasound elastography imaging. Field II simulation software was used for generation of ultrasound radio frequency (RF) echo signals for statistical analysis, and a clinical ultrasound scanner (Sonix® RP scanner, Ultrasonix Medical Corp., Richmond, BC, Canada) was used to scan a commercial ultrasound elastography tissue-mimicking phantom for image quality analysis. The statistical analysis results confirmed that, in overall, the proposed algorithm has similar performance compared to NCC and SSD algorithms. The image quality analysis results indicated that the proposed algorithm produces strain images with marginally higher signal-to-noise and contrast-to-noise ratios compared to NCC and SSD algorithms.
时延估计在超声医学成像中有无数应用。此前，我们提出了一种新的时延估计算法，该算法基于符号函数求和来计算时延估计值（沙斯瓦里等人，2015年）。我们报告称，尽管该算法的计算效率显著更高，但其性能与归一化互相关（NCC）算法和平方差总和（SSD）算法相似。在本文中，我们在超声弹性成像中使用统计分析和图像质量分析来研究该算法的性能。使用Field II模拟软件生成用于统计分析的超声射频（RF）回波信号，并使用临床超声扫描仪（Sonix® RP扫描仪，加拿大不列颠哥伦比亚省里士满市的Ultrasonix Medical Corp.公司）扫描商用超声弹性成像组织模拟体模以进行图像质量分析。统计分析结果证实，总体而言，该算法与NCC算法和SSD算法相比具有相似的性能。图像质量分析结果表明，与NCC算法和SSD算法相比，该算法生成的应变图像具有略高的信噪比和对比噪声比。
