Beamforming Algorithms in Medical Ultrasound Imaging: State-of-the-Art in Research

This chapter, as the core of the book, is mainly dedicated to different types of beamforming algorithms; first, the necessity of beamforming in medical ultrasound imaging is stated, the limitations of using beamforming in medical ultrasound and the ways to solve them are explained in detail. Then, the adaptive minimum variance algorithm, which significantly affects the image resolution, is discussed. In addition, the image contrast improvement algorithms are presented. One of the limitations that we face in the minimum variance algorithm is its weak robustness against the mismatches between the assumed parameters and their corresponding actual values, which leads to performance degradation of the algorithm. In this chapter, some techniques to deal with this limitation are presented. In the following, the solutions to reduce the computational complexity and speed up the minimum variance algorithm are presented in detail. This chapter finally ends with the user-independent methods for the minimum variance algorithm.