Noise Adaptive Beamforming for Linear Array Photoacoustic Imaging

The delay-and-sum (DAS) algorithm is widely used for beamforming in linear array photoacoustic (PA) imaging systems and characterized by fast execution. However, these algorithms suffer from various drawbacks, such as low resolution, contrast, high sidelobe artifacts, lack of visual coherence. More recently, adaptive weighting was introduced to improve the reconstruction image quality. Unfortunately, existing state-of-the-art are computationally expensive do not consider specific noise characteristics acquired ultrasonic signal. In this article, we present a new factor named variational coherence (VCF), which takes into account level variations radio frequency data. proposed technique provides superior results terms reduction, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), contrast improvement. quantitative microsphere phantom show that VCF-assisted DAS method leads 55% 25% improvements full-width-at-half-maximum (FWHM) 57% 32% improvement SNR, respectively, compared DAS-based methods. demonstrate can effectively reconstructed quality deliver satisfactory performance even with limited number sensor elements. potentially reduce instrumentation cost PA system contribute toward clinical translation modality.