A Joint Delay-and-Sum and Fourier Beamforming Method for High Frame Rate Ultrasound Imaging

Frame rate is an important metric for ultrasound imaging systems,and high frame rates(HFR)benefit moving-target imaging.One common way to obtain HFR imaging is to transmit a plane wave.Delay-and-sum(DAS)beamformer is a conventional beamforming algorithm,which is simple and has been widely implemented in clinical application.Fourier beamforming is an alternative method for HFR imaging and has high levels of imaging efficiency,imaging speed,and good temporal dynamic characteristics.Nevertheless,the resolution and contrast performance of HFR imaging based on DAS or Fourier beamforming are insufficient due to the single plane wave transmission.To address this problem,a joint DAS and Fourier beamforming method is introduced in this study.The proposed method considers the different distributions of sidelobes in DAS imaging and Fourier imaging and combines the angular spectrum and DAS to reconstruct ultrasound images.The proposed method is evaluated on simulation and experimental phantom datasets to compare its performance with DAS and Fourier beamforming methods.Results demonstrate that the proposed method improves image effective dynamic range and resolution while also retaining a high frame rate of the ultrasound imaging systems.The proposed method improves the effective dynamic range along axial and lateral directions by 10 dB,compared to standard DAS and Fourier beamforming.

An Efficient Algorithm Based on Spectrum Migration for High Frame Rate Ultrasound Imaging

The high frame rate(HFR)imaging technique requires only one emission event for imaging.Therefore,it can achieve ultrafast imaging with frame rates up to the kHz regime,which satisfies the frame rate requirements for imaging moving tissues in scientific research and clinics.Lu’s Fourier migration method is based on a non-diffraction beam to obtain HFR images and can improve computational speed and efficiency.However,in order to obtain high-quality images,Fourier migration needs to make full use of the spectrum of echo signals for imaging,which requires a large number of Fast Fourier Transform(FFT)points and increases the complexity of the hardware when the echo frequency is high.Here,an efficient algorithm using the spectrum migration technique based on the spectrum’s distribution characteristics is proposed to improve the imaging efficiency in HFR imaging.Since the actual echo signal spectrum is of limited bandwidth,low-frequency and high-frequency parts with low-energy have little contribution to the imaging spectrum.We transform the effective part that provides the main energy in the signal spectrum to the imaging spectrum while the ineffective spectrum components are not utilized for imaging.This can significantly reduce the number of Fourier transform points,improve Fourier imaging efficiency,and ensure the imaging quality.The proposed method is evaluated on simulated and experimental datasets.Results demonstrated that the proposed method could achieve equivalent image quality with a reduced point number for FFT compared to the complete spectrum migration.In this paper,it only requires a quarter of the FFT points used in the complete spectrum migration,which can improve the computational efficiency;thus,it is more suitable for real-time data processing.The proposed spectrum migration method has a specific significance for the study and clinical application of HFR imaging.

Generation and imaging of a tunable ultrafast intensity-rotating optical field with a cycle down to femtosecond region

A tunable ultrafast intensity-rotating optical field is generated by overlapping a pair of 20Hz,800 nm chirped pulses with a Michelson interferometer(MI).Its rotating rate can be up to 10 trillion radians per second(Trad/s),which can be flexibly tuned with a mirror in the MI.Besides,its fold rotational symmetry structure is also changeable by controlling the difference from the topological charges of the pulse pair.Experimentally,we have successfully developed a twopetal lattice with a tunable rotating speed from 3.9 Trad/s up to 11.9 Trad/s,which is confirmed by our single-shot ultrafast frame imager based on noncollinear optical-parametric amplification with its highest frame rate of 15 trillion frames per second(Tfps).This work is carried out at a low repetition rate.Therefore,it can be applied at relativistic,even ultrarelativistic,intensities,which usually operate in low repetition rate ultrashort and ultraintense laser systems.We believe that it may have application in laser-plasma-based accelerators,strong terahertz radiations and celestial phenomena.