Super-Resolution Ultrasound Imaging with Low Number of Frames Enhanced by Adaptive Beamforming

One of the challenges in Super-Resolution Ultrasound Imaging (SRUI) based on Ultrasound Localization Microscopy (ULM) is that we need a large number of localized points to form the final image, so a significant number of frames is needed. In this study, we propose a method that significantly reduces the number of frames while eventually having an acceptable output image. Also, in this method, we no longer need to localize the center of the microbubbles, and we will create images only by the accumulation of binary images. This requires using a suitable adaptive beamformer for each frame to achieve the best possible quality of work. Investigation of beamformers in our other work proved that the Eigenspace-Based Minimum Variance (EIB-MV) beamformer with Coherence Factor (CF) coefficient was better than other beamformers in creating suitable binary frames. To compare the proposed method with the ULM method, parameters of SNR, PSNR and MSE were investigated. First, 100 frames were used to create the final images. Obtained results showed that the proposed method improves SNR and PSNR by 2 dB. Also, to investigate the effect of the number of frames on imaging parameters, only 8 frames were used to create the final image in the proposed method. By comparing the results of our proposed method with 8 frames and the ULM method with 100 frames, it was observed that the proposed method improves the SNR and PSNR by 0.8 dB relative to the ULM method.