Validation of image restoration methods on 3D-printed ultrasound phantoms

The resolution of ultrasound images is limited by the bandwidth of the imaging system and the features of the propagating medium. Using certain assumptions, image restoration can recover out-of-bandwidth data and improve resolution. Several resolution improvement methods have been reported in the literature. Due to the lack of ground truth, their evaluation remains an open issue. Indeed, to evaluate the performance of such methods, knowledge of the scattering function is necessary. Usually this is achieved with numerical simulations. In the current work, a 3D-printed phantom is used to test l
_p
-norm-regularized deconvolution for various values of p. Knowledge of the scattering function allows comparison of the deconvolved images with the ground truth.