Reducing clutter noise in fast ultrasound imaging with transverse high-pass filtering

Clutter noise that appears as line strips in parallel with transducer surface is often seen in fast imaging with plane wave or waves of small divergences. In this paper, spatial high-pass filters of different cut-off frequencies are applied in the transverse direction in Fourier domain to reduce the clutter noise for the high-frame rate (HFR) imaging method developed previously. The noise reduction and contrast enhancement are significant when 11 transmissions (maximum frame rate of 413 frames/s at a speed of sound of 1500 m/s and 165-mm image depth) are used. However, with 91 transmissions (maximum frame rate of 50 frames/s), the method is less effective since the original image already has a low clutter noise and a high contrast.