Improvising limitations of DNN based ultrasound image reconstruction

Abstract

Ultrasound modalities are cost-effective and radiation-free technology for real-time medical imaging. These modalities require image reconstruction to obtain the actual ultrasound images from ultrasound raw data. The ultrasound raw data is obtained in the form of echo after scanning an imaging plane through ultrasound waves. The most commonly used image reconstruction beamforming technique is Delay and Sum (DAS). Other sophisticated beamforming techniques are Delay Multiply and Sum (DMAS) and Minimum Variance Distortionless Response (MVDR). DAS has limited image quality, and the employment of sophisticated techniques increases the computational complexity and computational time with improvement in image quality. To overcome these problems, various DNN (Deep Neural Networks) based techniques have been proposed which can reconstruct ultrasound images directly from ultrasound raw data. But DNN implementation has two limitations: accuracy of reconstruction and generalizability of the model. To overcome these limitations, we are proposing methodologies with a DNN model which was able to reduce these limitations. Firstly, we generated the datasets which include multiple shapes such as line, circle, ellipse, and parabola. After that, we have implemented a CNN-DNN (Convolution Neural Network and Deep Neural Network) hybrid model which has significantly improved computational time as well as image quality. We have trained our model with different sets of data to validate the reconstruction of the image matrix. We achieved a significant improvement in computational time of around 100 times (from around 0.6 s to 0.0059 s) as compared to DAS beamforming technique. At the same time, we also achieved a significant improvement in image quality with 37.19 dB average and 41.37 dB maximum improved Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR), and 87.41% average and 95% maximum Structural Similarity Index Matrix (SSIM) value. We also achieved generalizability and precise image reconstruction by using the proposed model.