Thomson's multitaper approach combined with coherent plane-wave compounding to reduce speckle in ultrasound imaging

Simulations and experimental results demonstrate that in terms of the signal-to-noise ratio, contrast, and resolution, the image quality is increased using plane wave emissions at approximately ten steering angles with three Thomson's tapers. Outside the focal area, the lateral resolution is improved by a factor of 2, and the contrast is increased by approximately 2 dB compared with images obtained using a single focalization technique and Thomson's multitaper approach.