A Novel Euclidian-Weighted Spatio-Temporal Non-Linear Beamforming for Sparse Synthetic Aperture Ultrasound imaging: Initial Results

The development of a novel weighted non-linear beamformer, namely, Spatio- Temporal Delay Euclidian-Weighted Multiply and Sum (ST-DewMAS) is presented in this work. A sparse-transmission method (having just eight transmissions was selected to test the beamformer capability to produce the high-quality Ultrasound (US) image. This beamformer allows for achieving high-resolution image generation at higher temporal resolution. The developed beamformer is compared with standard beamformers in terms of the Contrast Ratio (CR), Resolution (Axial, AR and Lateral, LR), and Contrast-to-Noise Ratio (CNR). Results from experiments proved that ST-DewMAS can generate enhanced image quality compared to standard beamformers like DAS. Resolution and Contrast metrics enhanced by more than 35% by the proposed ST-DewMAS over others. In conclusion, both frame rate and image quality can be simultaneously enhanced by ST-DewMAS compared to standard beamformers.