Speeding up SURF Imaging

Any good medical ultrasound imaging system must be able to resolve anatomical structures properly, and simultaneously provide adequate frame rate so that moving structures can be studied with ease. In a conventional imaging system these properties are related by a trade-off, but is it possible to have one and the other by applying more advanced post-processing to acquired RF data? Two new methods, beam RF interpolation (BRI) and beam delay interpolation (BDI), are presented to solve this trade-off issue, using the SURF imaging technique to improve contrast resolution, and the new methods to increase frame rate. In vitro data was acquired using a standard imaging phantom, and a modified SURF imaging system, and processing of the data was done off-line. The results show that the new methods have potential to contribute to increasing frame rate and contrast resolution, but hardware issues necessitate verification of the results using different equipment.