Coherence Plane-Wave Compounding with Angle Coherence Factor for Ultrafast Ultrasound Imaging

Ultrafast ultrasound imaging with plane wave transmission has been a promising technique to image moving objects, however, implies compromises among resolution, contrast and sensitivity. Coherence plane-wave compounding (CPWC) can balance the image quality and frame rate. The image quality, especiallyin terms of the suppression of artifacts stemmed from side lobes, is greatly comprised by reducing the number of the tilted plane-waves. However, in some special scenarios, such as tracking shear wave propagation inside soft tissue, and imaging the complex blood flow, it’s better to keep a very high frame rate. How to realize a B-mode image of equivalent quality to the standard focused approach at a very high frame rate? Here we proposed a new imaging framework by combining CPWC with angle coherence factor. The B-mode images from simulation, experimental phantoms demonstrated that our proposed methodology greatly suppressed the side-lobes artifacts by around 20 dB compared with CPWC imaging, while the image quality, especially lateral resolution and contrast kept equivalent.