Minimum Variance Generalized Sidelobe Canceller and Eigenspace-based Generalized Sidelobe Canceller Beamformers Combined with Frost Postfilter for Medical Ultrasound Imaging

Abstract

There are different types of adaptive beamformers for medical ultrasound imaging using the plane waves technique. Two of these methods are relatively new, such as the Minimum Variance (MV) with Generalized Sidelobe Canceller (MVGSC) beamforming and Eigenspace-base with Generalized Sidelobe Canceller (EBGSC) beamforming. These two methods already show improvement in the ultrasound image when compared with Delay-and-Sum (DAS) beamforming and MV beamforming. In order to develop MVGSC and EBGSC techniques in this work, it was applied, to the weighted signal, the adaptive Frost postfilter. To evaluate the proposed method, two phantom data from the platform Plane-Wave Imaging Challenge in Medical Ultrasound (PICMUS) were used. One phantom with point scatterers and the other with cysts. To evaluate the performance of the beamforming with Frost postfilter we have used the Contrast Ratio (CR), the Contrast-to-Noise Ratio (CNR) and the geometric distortion ratio (GDR) of Full Width at Half Maximum (FWHM) axial and lateral. The CR and CNR were calculated in three cysts with different depths. The MVGSC-Frost and EBGSC-Frost have shown better performance than DAS, MV, MVGSC and EBGSC beamformers, but the proposed methods have a worse resolution than the others beamformers. However, it offers a much better performance in contrast, showing its potential for medical ultrasound imaging.