Super-resolution in medical imaging : An illustrative approach through ultrasound

The requirements for better resolution in all medical imaging modalities currently represent a very important and open challenge. Accurate measurement and visualization of structure in living tissues is intrinsically limited by the imaging system features. Imaging beyond these limits in medical imaging is referred to as super-resolution. We provide first a brief overview of super-resolution imaging and present a technique for achieving super-resolution in medical imaging based on analysis of the imaging system point spread function, and illustrate the methodology in the case of ultrasound imaging. The technique proposed uses parametric modeling to estimate B-mode images. The technique behavior is illustrated using phantom and in vivo images.