Learning while Acquisition: Towards Active Learning Framework for Beamforming in Ultrasound Imaging

In the recent past, there have been many efforts to accelerate adaptive beamforming for ultrasound (US) imaging using neural networks (NNs). However, most of these efforts are based on static models, i.e., they are trained to learn a single adaptive beamforming approach (e.g., minimum variance distortionless response (MVDR)) assuming that they result in the best image quality. Moreover, the training of such NNs is initiated only after acquiring a large set of data that consumes several gigabytes (GBs) of storage space. In this study, an active learning framework for beamforming is described for the first time in the context of NNs. The best quality image chosen by the user serves as the ground truth for the proposed technique, which trains the NN concurrently with data acqusition. On average, the active learning approach takes 0.5 seconds to complete a single iteration of training.