Ultrasound Rebeamforming Based Phase Aberration Correction

Phase aberration in ultrasound imaging, which is caused by mismatch of the actual and imaging sound speed, leads to distortions in the acquired images and so reduce their clinical value. In this paper, we propose an ultrasound rebeamforming(USRB) technique that rebeamforms a beamformed radio-frequency (RF) data with a new speed of sound (SOS). Inspired by the Stolt seismic migration and demigration methods, the USRB is realized in Fourier-domain to achieve low computation burden. By applying USRB on one beamformed RF data, a series of new beamformed RF data, which correspond to different SOSs, are obtained and then fused together according to their focusing quality factors (FQF) to realize phase aberration correction. Our method can correct both phase aberrations, which are caused by SOS mismatch and fixed transmission focusing (FTF) operation, by approximating FTF distortions as the one caused by speed mismatch. The proposed method does not need to modify the hardware of the ultrasound machine since it operates on the beamformed RF data. As a post-processing module, it can be integrated with any ultrasound system to enhance its imaging quality.