Compensated Row-Column Ultrasound Imaging System Using Multilayered Edge Guided Stochastically Fully Connected Random Fields

The row-column method received a lot of attention for 3-D ultrasound imaging. By reducing the number of connections required to address the 2-D array and therefore reducing the amount of data to handle, this addressing method allows for real time 3-D imaging. Row-column still has its limitations: the issues of sparsity, speckle noise inherent to ultrasound, the spatially varying point spread function, and the ghosting artifacts inherent to the row-column method must all be taken into account when building a reconstruction framework. In this research, we build on a previously published system and propose an edge-guided, compensated row-column ultrasound imaging system that incorporates multilayered edge-guided stochastically fully connected conditional random fields to address the limitations of the row-column method. Tests carried out on simulated and real row-column ultrasound images show the effectiveness of our proposed system over other published systems. Visual assessment show our proposed system’s potential at preserving edges and reducing speckle. Quantitative analysis shows that our proposed system outperforms previously published systems when evaluated with metrics such as Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio, Coefficient of Correlation, and Effective Number of Looks. These results show the potential of our proposed system as an effective tool for enhancing 3-D row-column imaging.