Title: A coherence-based phase aberration correction method in medical ultrasound  

Author: XIA Xinyuan； LI Ping； WU Wentao； MENG Xiaohui；  

Affiliation: Institute of Acoustics,Chinese Academy of Sciences； University of Chinese Academy of Sciences； 

Abstract: A coherence-based correction method was proposed in order to improve the lateral resolution and enhance the contrast of medical ultrasound imaging in the presence of phase aberration.The averaged coherence factor was proposed at first and used as a metric to evaluate phase aberration correction.By maximizing the averaged coherence factor,the time delay parameter of each channel was adjusted.A new set of coherence factors was calculated and the corrected data was optimized to form the final B-mode image.The simulations on point targets and a cyst phantom showed that the proposed method outperformed the nearest neighboring cross correlation method and conventional coherence-weighting method,and the lateral resolution and contrast ratio was improved by approximately 0.24mm and 18dB respectively.The proposed method combined the advantages of phase error correction and coherence-weighting,which could improve imaging qualities effectively in medical ultrasound.