Fast marching Phase-aberration Correction in Plane-Wave Transcranial Imaging

Although transcranial ultrasound imaging (TUI) has shown promise for clinical application, it has been shown that variable sound speed would severely affect the quality of TUI, leading to target deterioration and inaccurate depth position in the conventional constant velocity assumed plane-wave imaging (PWI). To overcome these limitations, this work proposed a multi-stencils fast marching (MSFM) phase distortion compensated method with PWI. The MSFM method relies on the approximate Eikonal equation to calculate the time of wavefront propagation through the skull. The proposed phase distortion correction method is more accurate, has a high framerate for transcranial ultrasound path estimation, and offers promising applications in TUI. Simulation experiments demonstrate that for point targets, the mean lateral resolution of MSFM-restored images increased by 55%, and the center position shift decreased by 85%. For the cyst targets, the eccentricity of fitting ellipse decreased by 65%, and the center position shift decreased by 69%.