P2F-3 Continuous Delay Estimation with Polynomial Splines

Delay estimation is used in ultrasonic imaging to estimate blood flow, determine phase aberration corrections, and to calculate elastographic images. The accuracy of delay estimation methods depends on noise, bandwidth, and delay range. In most cases a sub-sample estimate of the delay is required. Two new delay algorithms that use cubic polynomial splines to continuously represent the delay are introduced. These algorithms are compared to conventional delay estimators and to another spline based method. The proposed algorithms have better performance, in terms of bias and jitter, in a realistic ultrasonic imaging environment