ABSTRACT
The Horn and Schunck (HS) method, which amounts to the Jacobi iterative scheme in the interior of the image, was one of the first optical flow algorithms. In this article, we prove the convergence of the HS method, whenever the problem is well-posed. Our result is shown in the framework of a generalization of the HS method in dimension n ≥ 1, with a broad definition of the discrete Laplacian. In this context, the condition for the convergence is that the intensity gradients are not all contained in a same hyperplane. Two other articles ([17] and [13]) claimed to solve this problem in the case n = 2, but it appears that both of these proofs are erroneous. Moreover, we explain why some standard results on the convergence of the Jacobi method do not apply for the HS problem, unless n = 1. It is also shown that the convergence of the HS scheme implies the convergence of the Gauss-Seidel and SOR schemes for the HS problem.
ABSTRACT
Ultrafast ultrasound is an emerging modality that offers new perspectives and opportunities in medical imaging. Plane wave imaging (PWI) allows one to attain very high frame rates by transmission of planar ultrasound wave-fronts. As a plane wave reaches a given scatterer, the latter becomes a secondary source emitting upward spherical waves and creating a diffraction hyperbola in the received RF signals. To produce an image of the scatterers, all the hyperbolas must be migrated back to their apexes. To perform beamforming of plane wave echo RFs and return high-quality images at high frame rates, we propose a new migration method carried out in the frequency-wavenumber (f-k) domain. The f-k migration for PWI has been adapted from the Stolt migration for seismic imaging. This migration technique is based on the exploding reflector model (ERM), which consists in assuming that all the scatterers explode in concert and become acoustic sources. The classical ERM model, however, is not appropriate for PWI. We showed that the ERM can be made suitable for PWI by a spatial transformation of the hyperbolic traces present in the RF data. In vitro experiments were performed to outline the advantages of PWI with Stolt's f-k migration over the conventional delay-and-sum (DAS) approach. The Stolt's f-k migration was also compared with the Fourier-based method developed by J.-Y. Lu. Our findings show that multi-angle compounded f-k migrated images are of quality similar to those obtained with a stateof- the-art dynamic focusing mode. This remained true even with a very small number of steering angles, thus ensuring a highly competitive frame rate. In addition, the new FFT-based f-k migration provides comparable or better contrast-to-noise ratio and lateral resolution than the Lu's and DAS migration schemes. Matlab codes for the Stolt's f-k migration for PWI are provided.
