Tissue harmonic imaging based on the fourth harmonic: a simulation study

Abstract

Tissue harmonic imaging is a new ultrasound imaging technique which uses the harmonic components generated by non-linear acoustic propagation through human tissues to form an image. Several factors affect tissue harmonic imaging image quality. First, strong suppression of the fundamental frequency is necessary to allow the full dynamic range of the harmonic signals to appear. Second, the harmonic components should be enhanced when they are much weaker than the fundamental frequency. In this research, based on tissue harmonic imaging, a new technique for enhancing the ultrasound imaging is presented. We first theoretically prove obtaining and enhancing the fourth harmonic and suppressing the fundamental frequency, second and third harmonics, and then after simulation of the theory by MATLAB 7·1 software, we show that our method can enhance the ultrasound image quality.

Keywords:

• ultrasound imaging
• tissue harmonic imaging
• image processing
• image enhancement