Hypothesis of Improved Visualization of Microstructures in the Interventricular Septum with Ultrasound and Adaptive Beamforming

Abstract

In this work, in vivo ultrasound cardiac images created with Capon's minimum variance adaptive beamformer are compared with images acquired with the conventional delay-and-sum beamformer. Specifically, we provide three views of a human heart imaged through the parasternal short-axis, the parasternal long-axis and the apical four-chamber views. The minimum variance beamformer produced images with improved lateral resolution, resulting in better resolved speckle structure and improved edges, especially on close investigation of the interventricular septum. These improvements in image quality might possibly improve the visualization of microstructures in the human heart.

Keywords: Capon beamforming; Cardiac imaging; Minimum variance beamforming; Ultrasound imaging.