Hierarchical Compressed Sensing for High Frame Rate Tissue Harmonic Imaging

Conventionally echocardiography uses plane or diverging transmit beams to monitor fast movements of hearts. However, reduced sensitivity and increased near field artifacts limits their applications in deep tissue. Tissue harmonic imaging, using focused ultrasound beams, is capable of improving image quality but is associated with a lower frame rate. In this study, we demonstrate the combination of hierarchical compressed sensing with tissue harmonic imaging enables increase in the frame rate. With 50%, 33.3% and 25% of original A-line number, our proposed method suppressed root mean squared error to 6.3%, 7.6% and 8.3%, respectively. In addition, the method was validated with a custom imaging sequence in vivo.