# Constrained CycleGAN for Effective Generation of Ultrasound Sector Images of Improved Spatial Resolution

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.00995 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.00995/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 17 of its 76 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 2 Sep 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 17 of 17)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05233/) (2021)
- [Image-to-Image Translation with Conditional Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.07004/) (2016)
- [Unsupervised Representation Learning with Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.06434/) (2015)
- [Instance Normalization: The Missing Ingredient for Fast Stylization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1607.08022/) (2016)
- [Diffusion Models: A Comprehensive Survey of Methods and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.00796/) (2022)
- [Unpaired Image-to-Image Translation using Cycle-Consistent Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.10593/) (2017)
- [Unsupervised Image Super-Resolution using Cycle-in-Cycle Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.00437/) (2018)
- [Translating and Segmenting Multimodal Medical Volumes with Cycle- and Shape-Consistency Generative Adversarial Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.09655/) (2018)
- [Deep MR to CT Synthesis using Unpaired Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.01155/) (2017)
- [Perceptual Adversarial Networks for Image-to-Image Transformation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.09138/) (2017)
- [Unpaired Brain MR-to-CT Synthesis using a Structure-Constrained CycleGAN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.04536/) (2018)
- [Cycle Consistent Adversarial Denoising Network for Multiphase Coronary CT Angiography](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.09748/) (2018)
- [Simulating Patho-realistic Ultrasound Images using Deep Generative Networks with Adversarial Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.07881/) (2017)
- [Perception Consistency Ultrasound Image Super-resolution via Self-supervised CycleGAN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.14142/) (2020)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Objective. A phased or a curvilinear array produces ultrasound (US) images with a sector field of view (FOV), which inherently exhibits spatially-varying image resolution with inferior quality in the far zone and towards the two sides azimuthally. Sector US images with improved spatial resolutions are favorable for accurate quantitative analysis of large and dynamic organs, such as the heart. Therefore, this study aims to translate US images with spatially-varying resolution to ones with less spatially-varying resolution. CycleGAN has been a prominent choice for unpaired medical image translation; however, it neither guarantees structural consistency nor preserves backscattering patterns between input and generated images for unpaired US images. Approach. To circumvent this limitation, we propose a constrained CycleGAN (CCycleGAN), which directly performs US image generation with unpaired images acquired by different ultrasound array probes. In addition to conventional adversarial and cycle-consistency losses of CycleGAN, CCycleGAN introduces an identical loss and a correlation coefficient loss based on intrinsic US backscattered signal properties to constrain structural consistency and backscattering patterns, respectively. Instead of post-processed B-mode images, CCycleGAN uses envelope data directly obtained from beamformed radio-frequency signals without any other non-linear postprocessing. Main Results. In vitro phantom results demonstrate that CCycleGAN successfully generates images with improved spatial resolution as well as higher peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) and structural similarity (SSIM) compared with benchmarks. Significance. CCycleGAN-generated US images of the in vivo human beating heart further facilitate higher quality heart wall motion estimation than benchmarks-generated ones, particularly in deep regions.