Optimization of Frequency and Plane- Wave Compounding by Minimum Variance Beamforming

Coherent plane-wave compounding achieves high spatiotemporal resolution and has been studied actively for spatial compounding beamforming, where multiple plane waves are transmitted at different angles. Meanwhile, various frequency compounding methods have been proposed for reducing speckle noise. In this study, we propose a method called frequency and plane-wave compounding minimum-variance distortionless response (FPWC-MVDR) compounding, which achieves high-spatial-resolution imaging by simultaneously optimizing frequency and spatial compounding adopting a minimum variance scheme. In the algorithm of this method, the data-compounded-on-receive MVDR principle developed for coherent plane-wave compounding is extended and applied. Its high resolution is shown in experiments conducted for a phantom mimicking soft tissue.