Ghosh Arpan, Thittai Arun K
Biomedical Ultrasound Laboratory, Department of Applied Mechanics and Biomedical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, India.
Biomedical Ultrasound Laboratory, Department of Applied Mechanics and Biomedical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, India.
Ultrasonics. 2025 Apr;148:107535. doi: 10.1016/j.ultras.2024.107535. Epub 2024 Nov 28.
Quasi-static elastography (QSE) is a well-established technique used in medical imaging, where ultrasound data is collected both, before and after applying a slight compression on a tissue. This data is then analyzed to create image frames that reveal the stiffness parameter of the underlying tissue medium. Previous studies have focused on assessing how the Conventional Focused Beam (CFB) transmit method impacts the ultrasound elastography image quality. Recent studies have also shown an interest in synthetic aperture techniques like the Diverging Beam Synthetic Aperture Technique (DBSAT), due to its potential to enhance ultrasound image quality. However, its application in elastography has received limited attention. This paper introduces a new strategy of averaging low-resolution elastogram frames (LREA), obtained from DBSAT transmit method to improve the quality of elastography images. The CFB technique involves scanning the tissue line by line. In contrast, DBSAT is a synthetic aperture method that generates multiple low-resolution elastogram frames before combining them together to create a single high-quality image. In this research paper all the experimental studies were conducted on an agar-gelatin phantom, demonstrating the effectiveness of estimating elastograms from the low-resolution frame data of DBSAT transmit scheme and then summing them together to produce an elastogram with enhanced image quality. The results show a maximum improvement of 8 dB in the image quality metric of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) as well as a 7 dB improvement in contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) when comparing elastography images obtained by the proposed LREA method and the elastography images obtained by regular processing of the RF data acquired using the different methods of CFB and DBSAT.
准静态弹性成像（QSE）是医学成像中一种成熟的技术，在对组织施加轻微压缩之前和之后都要收集超声数据。然后对这些数据进行分析，以创建显示底层组织介质刚度参数的图像帧。以往的研究主要集中在评估传统聚焦束（CFB）发射方法如何影响超声弹性成像的图像质量。最近的研究也对发散束合成孔径技术（DBSAT）等合成孔径技术表现出兴趣，因为它有提高超声图像质量的潜力。然而，其在弹性成像中的应用受到的关注有限。本文介绍了一种新策略，即对通过DBSAT发射方法获得的低分辨率弹性图帧进行平均（LREA），以提高弹性成像图像的质量。CFB技术是逐行扫描组织。相比之下，DBSAT是一种合成孔径方法，它在将多个低分辨率弹性图帧组合在一起以创建单个高质量图像之前生成这些帧。在本研究论文中，所有实验研究均在琼脂 - 明胶模型上进行，证明了从DBSAT发射方案的低分辨率帧数据估计弹性图，然后将它们相加在一起以生成具有更高图像质量的弹性图的有效性。结果表明，与通过CFB和DBSAT不同方法采集的RF数据进行常规处理所获得的弹性成像图像相比，所提出的LREA方法获得的弹性成像图像在信噪比（SNR）图像质量指标上最大提高了8dB，在对比度噪声比（CNR）上提高了7dB。
