Streak artifact reduction for blind deconvolution of multi-beam image

In ultrasound imaging, blind deconvolution technique is used to enhance image resolution. However, it causes vertical streak artifact. In this paper, scanline grouping method for reducing streak artifact is proposed, based on the assumption that the vertical streak artifact is due to the difference of the scanline characteristics. The input scanlines with similar characteristics are grouped together, and then blind deconvolution is performed separately for each group. For performance evaluation, we used 75 in-vivo abdomen cases of 2 multi-beam and 36 in-vivo thyroid cases of RF interpolation images obtained with convex and linear probes. When evaluated by correlation between neighboring scanlines, the proposed method was able to reduce streak artifact, as correlation value was approximately 10% higher than the conventional method. In addition, processing time of the proposed method was approximately 5 times faster than the conventional method. The proposed scanline grouping method is expected to work effectively with other adaptive or iterative signal processing techniques, such as 2D or lateral direction filters.