Abstract: Methods and systems are provided for receiving beamforming of ultrasound signals to generate ultrasound images with increased resolution. In one example, a method includes calculating a respective beamforming quality metric for each of a plurality of beamforming sound speeds, each beamforming quality metric calculated on ultrasound receive channel signals time-delayed based on a respective beamforming sound speed, identifying a target beamforming sound speed based on the beamforming quality metrics, and generating an ultrasound image using the target beamforming sound speed.

Abstract: Signal-dependent noise in a coherent imaging system signal, such as in medical ultrasound imaging, is reduced by filtering speckle noise using nonlinear adaptive thresholding of received echo wavelet transform coefficients, thereby enhancing the resultant image by improving the signal-to-noise ratio.

Abstract: In a digital ultrasound imaging system, artifacts due to spurious ultrasound reflections from a highly reflective object outside the region of interest are reduced in magnitude by apparatus included in the beamforming system of the digital imaging system. A null is formed in a specified direction in the ultrasound beam patterns by perturbing the time delay on each receive channel. After estimating the direction of the highly reflective, interfering object and computing a time delay perturbation using a very fast algorithm, a null approximately 10 dB deep is introduced into each beam in the direction of the interfering object. This null reduces the magnitude of artifacts in the image, thereby providing image enhancement.

Abstract: An ultrasonic imaging system for performing a scan in which beamforming time delay errors due to nonuniformity in sound speed within the transmission medium are corrected employs a multiple channel transmitter and receiver. Time delay errors are measured by cross correlating the channel signal in each respective one of the receiver channels with a reference beamsum signal produced by summing all the receiver channel signals. The resulting time delay corrections are applied to corresponding channels of the transmitter and receiver to offset time delay errors in the subsequent acquisition of image data.