Motion Compensation Improves Medical Ultrasound Image Quality

Internal noise degrades the quality of a medical ultrasound imaging and thus, reduces its usefulness as a diagnostic tool. We study the effect of fusing multiple ultrasound pings on improving the quality of the ultrasound image. This approach is limited by the relative motion between the sensor array and internal organs, a problem which reduces the effect of the fusion. We present a robust motion estimation algorithm that relies on multiple receivers. We further demonstrate that fusion of multiple ping images following motion compensation improves the ultrasound image quality and removes the degrading effect of tissue motion. Finally, we demonstrate that ultrasound imaging can be enhanced by the use of image processing methods and by overlaying the skeleton on the analog image.