Procesamiento de Señales e Imágenes Digitales.

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    Joint reconstruction techniques for ultrasonic attenuation imaging
    (Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 2024-05-08) Miranda Zárate, Edmundo Arom; Lavarello Montero, Roberto Janniel
    El ultrasonido cuantitativo (QUS, por sus siglas en inglés) es una modalidad de imagen no invasiva que caracteriza numéricamente los tejidos para el diagnóstico médico. Los estimadores QUS se basan en parámetros acústicos como la pendiente del coeficiente de atenuación (ACS, por sus siglas en inglés). Un estudio anterior propuso eliminar el ruido de las relaciones logarítmicas espectrales utilizando una variación total de un solo canal a través de la frecuencia. El método espectral para estimar el ACS, conocido como diferencia logarítmica espectral (SLD, por sus siglas en inglés) no incorpora ninguna estrategia de reconstrucción conjunta para mejorar la imagen. Por lo tanto, este trabajo propone la integración de dos estrategias conjuntas compatibles con el marco SLD. Primero, un enfoque de regularización conjunta denominado variación total nuclear (TNV-SLD) es implementado, el cual combina información geométrica del ACS y el componente del coeficiente de retrodispersión (BSC, por sus siglas en inglés) para mejorar la calidad de las imágenes, logrando mejores resultados en términos de error porcentual medio (MPE) y relación contraste-ruido (CNR). Posteriormente, el estudio se amplía para eliminar conjuntamente los ratios logarítmicos espectrales del SLD en los canales de frecuencia. Se propone un método conjunto multifrecuencia para aumentar la calidad de las imágenes de atenuación. Se consideraron dos modificaciones de la variación total con base en las normas Frobenius (TFV) y nuclear (TNV). Las métricas se compararon con dos métodos de regularización anteriores denominados RSLD y TVSLD, basados en la variación total de un solo canal con datos de maniquíes simulados y experimentales, y una muestra de tejido ex vivo. Los resultados mostraron un mejor desempeño general del método TNV para ambas estrategias, produciendo mapas ACS mejorados y extendiendo el balance entre la resolución espacial y la variabilidad de la estimación en términos de CNR con un sesgo estable.
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    Characterization of healthy skin with high-frequency ultrasound using quantitative ultrasound
    (Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 2018-08-20) Saavedra Bazán, Ana Cecilia; Castañeda Aphan, Benjamín
    The skin is the largest organ of the body that protects it from the external environment. High- frequency ultra sound (HF-US) has been used to visualize the skin in depth and to diagnose some pathologies in dermatological applications. Quantitative ultrasound (QUS) includes several techniques that provide values of particular physical properties. In this thesis work, three QUS parameters are explained and used to characterize healthy skin through HF-US: attenuation coefficient slope (ACS), backscatter coefficient (BSC) and shear wave speed (SWS). They were estimated with the regularized spectral-log difference (RSLD) method, the reference phan- tom method, and the crawling wave sonoelastography method, respectively. All the three parameters were assessed in phantoms, ex vivo and in vivo skin. In calibrated phantoms, RSLD showed a reduc- tion of up to 93% of the standard deviation concerning the estimation with SLD, and BSC showed an agreement with the Faran’s theoretical curve. In gelatin-based phantoms, surface acoustic waves (SAWs) were estimated in two interfaces: solid-water and solid-US gel, which all owed corroborating SAWs presence and finding an empirical compensation factor when the coupling interface is US gel. A correction factor of 0:97 for SAW-to-shear was found to avoid underestimation in phantoms. Porcine thigh was calculated in the range from 8 to 27 MHz, where the ACS was 4:08 _+_0:43 dB cm -1 MHz-1 and BSC was in the range from 10 1 to 10° sr-1 _cm-1. Crawling wave sonoelastography method was applied for the vibration frequencies between 200 Hz and 800 Hz, where SWS was in the range from 4:6 m/sto9:1 m/s. In vivo ACS and BSC were assessed in the healthy forearm and thigh, whereas SWS only in the thigh. The average ACS in the forearm dermis was 2.07dB cm-1 _MHz-1, which is in close agreement with the literature. A significant difference (p < 0.05) was found between the ACS in the forearm dermis and the thigh dermis (average ACS of 2.54dB cm-1 _MHz-1). The BSC of the forearm and thigh dermis were in the range from 10 -1 to 10° sr-1 _cm-1, and in the range from 10-1 to 10° sr-1 _cm-1, respectively. The SWS in the thigh dermis was 2:4 _+_0:38 m/s for a vibration frequency of 200Hz, with an increasing trend as frequency increases. Results suggest that these QUS parameters have the potential to be used as a tool for in vivo skin characterization and show potential for future application in skin lesions.
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    Robust Minimmun Variance Beamformer using Phase Aberration Correction Methods
    (Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 2017-04-28) Chau Loo Kung, Gustavo Ramón; Lavarello Montero, Roberto Janniel; Dahl, Jeremy J.
    The minimum variance (MV) beamformer is an adaptive beamforming method that has the potential to enhance the resolution and contrast of ultrasound images. Although the sensitivity of the MV beamformer to steering vector errors and array calibration errors is well-documented in other fields, in ultrasound it has been tested only under gross sound speed errors. Several robust MV beamformers have been proposed, but have mainly reported robustness only in the presence of sound speed mismatches. Additionally the impact of PAC methods in mitigating the effects of phase aberration in MV beamformed images has not been observed Accordingly, this thesis report consists on two parts. On the first part, a more complete analysis of the effects of different types of aberrators on conventional MV beamforming and on a robust MV beamformer from the literature (Eigenspace-based Minimum Variance (ESMV) beamformer) is carried out, and the effects of three PAC algorithms and their impact on the performance of the MV beamformer are analyzed (MV-PC). The comparison is carried out on Field II simulations and phantom experiments with electronic aberration and tissue aberrators. We conclude that the sensitivity to speed of sound errors and aberration limit the use of the MV beamformer in clinical applications, and that the effect of aberration is stronger than previously reported in the literature. Additionally it is shown that under moderate and strong aberrating conditions, MV-PC is a preferable option to ESMV. On the second part, we propose a new, locally-adaptive, phase aberration correction method (LAPAC) able to improve both DAS and MV beamformers that integrates aberration correction for each point in the image domain into the formulation of the MV beamformer. The new method is tested using fullwave simulations of models of human abdominal wall, experiments with tissue aberrators, and in vivo carotid images. The LAPAC method is compared with conventional phase aberration correction with delay-and-sum beamforming (DAS-PC) and MV-PC. The proposed method showed between 1-4 dB higher contrast than DAS-PC and MV-PC in all cases, and LAPAC-MV showed better performance than LAPAC-DAS. We conclude that LAPAC may be a viable option to enhance ultrasound image quality of both DAS and MV in the presence of clinically-relevant aberrating conditions.