Generalized sidelobe canceler beamforming combined with Eigenspace-Wiener postfilter for medical ultrasound imaging

BACKGROUND: The beamforming algorithm is key to the image quality of the medical ultrasound system. The generalized sidelobe canceler (GSC) beamforming can improve the image quality in lateral resolution, but the contrast is not improved correspondingly. OBJECTIVE: In our research, we try to optimize the generalized sidelobe canceler to obtain images that achieve an improvement in both lateral resolution and contrast. METHODS: We put forward a new beamforming algorithm which combines the generalized sidelobe canceler and Eigenspace-Wiener postfilter. According to eigenspace decomposition of the covariance matrix of the received data, the components of the Wiener postfilter can be calculated from the signal matrix and the noise matrix. Then, the adaptive weight vector of GSC is further constrained by the Eigenspace-Wiener postfilter, which make the output energy of the receiving array closer to the desired signal than the conventional GSC output. RESULTS: We compare the new beamforming algorithm with delay-and-sum (DS) beamforming, synthetic aperture (SA) beamforming, and GSC beamforming using the simulated and experimental data sets. The quantitative results show that our method reduces the FWHM by 85.5%, 80.5%, and 38.9% while improving the CR by 123.6%, 47.7%, 84.4% on basis of DS, SA, and GSC beamforming, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: The new beamforming algorithm can obviously improve the imaging quality of medical ultrasound imaging systems in both lateral resolution and contrast.