Biomedical Signal Processing and Control 78 (2022) 104003

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Biomedical Signal Processing and Control

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/bspc

Temporal super-resolution of echocardiography using a novel high-precision

non-polynomial interpolation
Sajjad Afrakhteh a , Hamed Jalilian b , Giovanni Iacca a , Libertario Demi a ,∗
a
Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science, University of Trento, Italy
b
Department of Mathematics, Iran University of Science and Technology, Narmak, Tehran, Iran

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: Higher frame rates are very useful for improving medical diagnosis in fast-moving parts of the heart, especially
Super-resolution in the valves. To this end, we propose a non-polynomial interpolation method for increasing the frame rate in
Echocardiography echocardiography. Besides describing the proposed method, we present two additional contributions: (1) we
Frame rate
obtain a closed-form solution, which is continuous and infinitely differentiable; (2) we provide an error analysis
Interpolation
of the method. The resulting error bound indicates that the interpolation method is reliable. Finally, to show
Non-polynomial functions
the efficiency of our proposal in temporal super-resolution, i.e., the increase in frame rate, we apply it to
three types of datasets, including a 1D signal, a simulated dataset, and B-mode echocardiography images.
Our experimental results show that the Mean Squared Error of the proposed method is reduced from 0.6 to
0.3, while having the same computational complexity compared to cubic B-spline. The quantitative results
also indicate that, even with lower selection rates, we can reach a high performance reconstruction while the
image quality is not degraded significantly.

1. Introduction
Echocardiography is a method that uses sound waves to create
heart images. The most important advantage of this method is its non-
invasiveness, because it does not expose the patient to radiations [1].
Echocardiography examines different parts of the heart, including the
heart valves and cavities, from outside the body. This test can help
diagnose abnormal valves, abnormal heart rhythms, inherited heart
diseases, and infections around the heart. In echocardiography, tem-
poral resolution is very important. Temporal resolution is expressed by
a factor called frame rate, which is the number of images that can be
produced and presented per unit of time. Echocardiographic images are
created by sending ultrasound pulses into the tissue. The transmitter
sends a pulse for each transmitted beam and waits for a response from
the target tissue. An image is complete when all the beam lines are
complete, which increases the time required to form the whole image.
This reduces the maximum number of output images per second, that
is the frame rate. On the other hand, higher frame rates would allow
physicians to better see moving structures, such as heart valves (as
fast as the human eye can see, i.e., with a frame rate of 45 Hz). In
2D and 3D echocardiography devices, the frame rate is about 30–60
frames per second and 10–20 volumes per second, respectively [2].
However, this frame rate is not sufficient for performing diagnostics in
fast-moving parts of the heart (such as the mitral and aortic valves) [2].
This is where increasing the frame rate comes into play. For increasing
the frame rate of ultrasound imaging, there are two ways: one is pre-
processing, which is related to the acquisition of the data; another is
post-processing, which is the context of the present work.
Pre-processing methods: During the last decades, some relatively
simple methods have been suggested to improve the temporal reso-
lution of ultrasound imaging in the pre-processing stage [3]. A first
attempt was based on reducing the number of scan lines [4]. By this
idea, the frame rate can be increased by the same proportion. However,
the spatial resolution is decreased by reducing the image scan lines. In
this way, Afrakhteh and Behnam [5] proposed an idea based on a selec-
tion of a fraction of scan lines of single image using regular sampling,
then beamforming them and reconstructing the other scan lines using
a low-complexity reconstruction technique. Despite the efficiency of
the suggested technique in improving the spatial resolution, it depends
on the application, and relevant spatial information may be missed in
higher frame rates (i.e., when the frame rate is increased by more than
three times). Another approach was based on multi-line transmission
(MLT) [6] and multi-line acquisition (MLA) [7]. In MLT, which is also
called parallel transmit beamforming (PTB), multiple focused beams
are transmitted simultaneously during a single transmission event, such
that the frame rate is increased. However, the main limitation of MLT is
the presence of crosstalk artifacts between parallel transmitted beams.

∗ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: libertario.demi@unitn.it (L. Demi).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bspc.2022.104003
Received 23 February 2022; Received in revised form 20 June 2022; Accepted 11 July 2022
Available online 21 July 2022
1746-8094/© 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
S. Afrakhteh et al.
MLA, which is also called parallel receive beamforming (PRB), is based
instead on transmitting a wide beam to cover a large field of view
(FOV), and then make use of the beams to beamform multiple A-
scan lines for each transmission event. Thanks to MLA, the temporal
resolution can be improved, but the reduced penetration depth, lower
signal to noise ratio (SNR), reduced spatial resolution, and higher
sidelobes are problematic.
Post-processing methods: In the recent decade, increasing the
frame rate in the post-processing stage has received a lot of attention
and many research efforts have been done in this direction. Tempo-
ral super-resolution of 2D/3D echocardiography using cubic B-spline
interpolation has been developed by Jalali et al. [2]. This method is
actually a post-processing method that achieves an improvement of
the frame rate after image formation. Nozari et al. in [8] introduced
a new method based on motion-compensated interpolation and 3D
speckle tracking to enhance the temporal resolution of 3D echocardiog-
raphy. Gifani et al. [9] used sparse representation for the enhancement
of echocardiographic images. Perrin et al. used frame reordering to
obtain temporal enhancement of 3D echocardiography [10]. In [11],
manifold learning was proposed to pseudo-increasing frame rates of
echocardiography images. Liu et al. [12] presented a systematic in-
vestigation of lateral estimation using various interpolation approaches
in conventional ultrasound imaging. Real-time interpolation for true
3D ultrasound image volumes was presented in [13]. In [14], the
authors proposed four image interpolation techniques for ultrasound
data acquisition. Jin et al. [15] constructed an annihilating filter-
based low-rank interpolation for compressive dynamic aperture B-mode
ultrasound imaging. In [16], Q. Huang et al. reconstructed 3D images
by voxel approximation based on Bézier curves of degree 3. They also
used higher-order methods, but, due to the smoothness of the bases,
the results were less accurate than those obtained with the third-order
method. Moreover, they observed that the best results were obtained
when the raw B-scan data are sparse. A modified scan conversion
method was proposed by Robinson et al. in [17], which has a higher
ability to increase the frame rate (with respect to the previous method),
and also requires fewer lines to scan. This method is also computa-
tionally simpler and reduces computation time. In [18], M. Sanches
et al. have proposed a 3D interpolation method based on the Rayleigh
reconstruction algorithm, which in addition to interpolation has also
been effective at reducing noise. Polynomial interpolation of different
degrees, as well as the finite impulse response (FIR) filtering method for
reconstructing B-mode echocardiographic images, have been compared
in [19]. The results showed that the FIR filtering method works better
than the other compared linear interpolation methods. A new fast
marching method (FMM), consisting of two steps (bin-filing and hole-
filling), was proposed in [20] to perform interpolation for freehand
3D ultrasound images. FMM reduces the processing time compared to
other interpolation methods, such as voxel nearest neighbor (VNN),
pixel nearest neighbor (PNN), and distance weighted (DW). To achieve
high frame rates (even higher than 1000 frames per second), and an
attractive viewing experience at this frame rate, ultra-fast imaging has
been used by M. Tanter et al. in [21]. A high-quality single-image super-
resolution algorithm based on linear Bayesian map estimation with
sparsity prior was proposed by Dong Sun et al. in [22]. The authors
provided a closed-form solution with exponential convergence speed
that is easy to use. A deep learning method was proposed in [23] to
increase the video resolution.
As mentioned, increasing the frame rate is a challenging problem
in medical ultrasound imaging. As an example, this is particularly true
when aiming at tracking quick and transient heart motions. Rather
than adjusting the imaging system′ s hardware or beamforming strategy,
the primary research question of this study is to investigate whether a
mathematical solution could be directly applied to post-beamformed
data for improving the temporal resolution of the system, which can in
turn aid in the study of tissue mechanical properties or transient phys-
iological events. The ideal mathematical solution should furthermore
2
Biomedical Signal Processing and Control 78 (2022) 104003
improve the frame rate without sacrificing image quality and adding
excessive complexity. Also, it is desired that the mathematical solution
be flexible or adjustable to control the smoothness and the quality of
the interpolation.
In this paper, interpolation in the post-processing stage is used
to increase the frame rate. More specifically, we use non-polynomial
bases to reconstruct echocardiographic images. While we do not claim
that the proposed interpolation method is the best possible one, we
show that using non-polynomial functions allows to achieve quite
satisfactory results, and offers a number of advantageous features. For
instance, these functions are continuous and infinitely differentiable;
they achieve high accuracy in approximation; they are characterized
by a free parameter to control the interpolation error. Of note, these
functions have previously been used to solve ordinary differential
equations [24,25], partial differential equations [26,27], and integral
equations [28,29].
The remainder of this paper is structured as follows. In Section 2, we
briefly introduce the proposed non-polynomial interpolation method,
and then explain the interpolation between selected frames, and how
increased frame rates using non-polynomial functions are achieved. The
data examples and numerical results are presented in Section 3. Finally,
we provide the conclusion in Section 4.
2. Materials and methods
When dealing with fast moving organs such as the mitral valves, the
frame rate available with standard echocardiography does not always
guarantee a robust visualization and analysis of the organ dynamics
from which clinically relevant decisions may be derived. Solutions
aimed at increasing the frame rate are thus widely researched. To this
end, we propose to apply a non-polynomial interpolation approach to
the temporal pixel intensity signals. In this paper, we present a closed-
form solution based on the interpolation technique. Furthermore, we
present a detailed error analysis of the suggested reconstruction ap-
proach to determine the order of the reconstruction error.
Here, at first we provide the proposed interpolation technique,
which is called non-polynomial interpolation, and then prove the ef-
ficiency of the proposed method via error analysis. Then, we de-
scribe how this approach can be used for temporal super-resolution.
Finally we present the image quality metrics used in the experimental
validation.
2.1. Non-polynomial interpolation
Let 𝛤𝑛 = {𝑡𝑖 = 𝑎 + 𝑖ℎ, 𝑖 = 0, 1, … , 𝑛} be a partition of an arbitrary
interval [𝑎, 𝑏], with 𝑎, 𝑏 ∈ 𝐑 and ℎ = 𝑏−𝑎 𝑛
being the time step. A
non-polynomial interpolation function 𝑃 (𝑡) interpolates an unknown
function 𝑦(𝑡), 𝑡 ∈ ≥0 , in the interval [𝑡𝑖 , 𝑡𝑖+1 ], 𝑖 = 0, 1, … , 𝑛 − 1, as
follows [28,29]:
𝑃 (𝑡) ∈ 𝑆𝑝𝑎𝑛{1, 𝑡, … , 𝑡𝛽−2 , 𝑒−𝜏𝑡 , 𝑒𝜏𝑡 } (1)
where 𝑆𝑝𝑎𝑛(⋅) is the set of all the linear combinations of {1, 𝑡, … , 𝑡𝛽−2 ,
𝑒−𝜏𝑡 , 𝑒𝜏𝑡 }, 𝜏 is an arbitrary parameter, 𝛽 > 2 is a positive integer and
𝑃 (𝑡) belongs to the class 𝐶 ∞ [𝑎, 𝑏]. If 𝛽 = 3, the method is equivalent to
cubic spline and B-spline in terms of computational complexity. 𝑃 (𝑡)
reduces to ordinary polynomial interpolation if 𝜏 → 0. As a special
case of Eq. (1), we consider the following form of non-polynomial
interpolation:
𝑃𝑖 (𝑡) = 𝑎𝑖 + 𝑏𝑖 (𝑡 − 𝑡𝑖 ) + 𝑐𝑖 𝑒𝜏𝑡 + 𝑑𝑖 𝑒−𝜏𝑡 , [𝑡𝑖 , 𝑡𝑖+1 ] (2)
where 𝑎𝑖 , 𝑏𝑖 , 𝑐𝑖 and 𝑑𝑖 ∈ . Note that Eq. (2) is the solution to the
following boundary value problem on [𝑡𝑖 , 𝑡𝑖+1 ]:
(𝐷4 − 𝜏 2 𝐷2 )𝑦 = 0 (3)
𝑡𝑖
where 𝐷 is a differential operator. If is equal to 𝜏2
Eq. (3) is 𝐸×𝐼
,
known as the beam equation [30]. 𝐸 is the Young modulus and 𝐼 is
S. Afrakhteh et al. Biomedical Signal Processing and Control 78 (2022) 104003

the cross-sectional moment of inertia [30]. By applying the following Proof. Assuming that 𝑆(𝑡) is the cubic spline interpolator, we define
four conditions to the general form in Eq. (2): the 𝜒 function as 𝜒 = 𝑃 (𝑡) − 𝑆(𝑡). Then:
𝑃 (𝑡𝑖 ) = 𝑦𝑖 , 𝑃 ′′ (𝑡𝑖 ) = 𝑀𝑖 , 𝑃 (𝑡𝑖+1 ) = 𝑦𝑖+1 , 𝑃 ′′ (𝑡𝑖+1 ) = 𝑀𝑖+1 , 𝑡 − 𝑡𝑖 𝑡𝑖+1 − 𝑡
𝜒(𝑡)′′ = 𝑃 (𝑡)′′ − 𝑆(𝑡)′′ = 𝜒𝑖+1
′′
+𝜒𝑖′′
ℎ ℎ[ ]
where 𝑀𝑖 and 𝑀𝑖+1 indicate, respectively, the second derivative of 𝑦(𝑡) 𝑡 − 𝑡𝑖 sinh 𝜏(𝑡 − 𝑡𝑖 )
at 𝑡𝑖 and 𝑡𝑖+1 , the coefficients 𝑎𝑖 , 𝑏𝑖 , 𝑐𝑖 and 𝑑𝑖 are determined, and Eq. (2) + 𝑀𝑖+1 −
ℎ sinh(𝜏ℎ)
can be rewritten as [26]: [ ]
𝑡𝑖+1 − 𝑡 sinh 𝜏(𝑡𝑖+1 − 𝑡)
1 + 𝑀𝑖 − .
𝑃 (𝑡) = {𝑀𝑖 sinh 𝜏(𝑡𝑖+1 − 𝑡𝑖 ) + 𝑀𝑖+1 sinh 𝜏(𝑡 − 𝑡𝑖 )} ℎ sinh(𝜏ℎ)
𝜏 2 sinh(𝜏ℎ)
( ) ( ) By expanding the bracketed terms, it is easy to understand that they
𝑀 (𝑡𝑖+1 − 𝑡𝑖 ) 𝑀𝑖+1 (𝑡 − 𝑡𝑖 )
+ 𝑦𝑖 − 𝑖
2 2
+ 𝑦𝑖+1 − . (4) are bounded by 𝜏 3ℎ . Also, according to Eq. (5), it can be concluded
𝜏2 ℎ 𝜏2 ℎ
that 𝜒𝑖 has a boundary of 4𝜏 2 ℎ2 max𝑖 |𝑀𝑖 |. As a result: |𝜒 ′′ (𝑡)| ≤
′′
The above equation is the closed-form solution for the interpolation 26 2 2
3
𝜏 ℎ max𝑖 |𝑀𝑖 |.
using non-polynomial functions. In relation to Eq. (4), the values of 𝑀𝑖
Now, according to the interpolation conditions, the theorem of the
are unknown and these values must be calculated. For this purpose,
mean value, and the definition 𝜒 = 𝑃 (𝑡) − 𝑆(𝑡), we have:
using the first-order derivative of 𝑃𝑖−1 (𝑡) and 𝑃𝑖 (𝑡) at 𝑡𝑖 , 𝑖 = 1, 2, … , 𝑛−1,
the following consistency condition is obtained: 𝜒(𝑡𝑖 ) = 𝜒(𝑡𝑖+1 ) = 0 ⇒ ∃𝜗𝑖 ∈ (𝑡𝑖 , 𝑡𝑖+1 ), 𝜒 ′ (𝜗𝑖 ) = 0 ⇒
[ ] [ ]
1 1 cosh(𝜏ℎ) 1
− 𝑀𝑖−1 + 2 − 𝑀𝑖 { 𝑡
𝜏 2 ℎ 𝜏 sinh(𝜏ℎ) 𝜏 sinh(𝜏ℎ) 𝜏 2 ℎ 𝜒 ′ (𝑡) = 𝜒 ′ (𝑡) − 𝜒 ′ (𝜗𝑖 ) = ∫𝜗 𝜒 ′′ (𝑥)𝑑𝑥
[ ] ⇒ 𝑖
1 1 𝑡
+ − 𝑀𝑖+1 𝜒(𝑡) = 𝜒(𝑡) − 𝜒(𝑡𝑖 ) = ∫𝑡 𝜒 ′ (𝑥)𝑑𝑥
𝑖
𝜏 2 ℎ 𝜏 sinh(𝜏ℎ)
26 2 3
1 Eventually, ‖𝜒 ′ (𝑡)‖ ≤ 𝜏 ℎ max𝑖 |𝑀𝑖 | and
= (𝑦𝑖+1 − 2𝑦𝑖 + 𝑦𝑖−1 ) 3
ℎ
26 2 4
or: ‖𝜒(𝑡)‖ ≤ 𝜏 ℎ max |𝑀𝑖 |. (9)
3 𝑖
1
𝜆𝑀𝑖−1 + 2𝛾𝑀𝑖 + 𝜆𝑀𝑖+1 = (𝑦𝑖+1 − 2𝑦𝑖 + 𝑦𝑖−1 ) (5) ℎ4
ℎ Due to the error [31] of the cubic spline ‖𝑦(𝑡) − 𝑆(𝑡)‖ ≤ max𝑖 |𝑦(4)
𝑖 |
[ ] [ ] 384
and the inequality in Eq. (9) we have:
where 𝜆 = 𝜏 21ℎ − 𝜏 sinh(𝜏ℎ)
1
and 𝛾 = 𝜏cosh(𝜏ℎ)
sinh(𝜏ℎ)
− 𝜏 21ℎ .
ℎ4
If we want to derive the most accurate relationship obtained from ‖𝑒‖ = ‖𝑦(𝑡) − 𝑃 (𝑡)‖ ≤ ‖𝑦(𝑡) − 𝑆(𝑡)‖ + ‖𝑆(𝑡) − 𝑃 (𝑡)‖ ≤ max |𝑦(4)
𝑖 |
384 𝑖
Eq. (5), we must obtain the error associated to this equation by expand-
26 2 4
ing it to the power of the operator 𝐸 = 𝑒ℎ𝐷 . The error rate, as well as + 𝜏 ℎ max |𝑀𝑖 | = 𝐶ℎ4 .
3 𝑖
the reason why the consistency relation shown in Eq. (5) is better than
the consistency relation in polynomial splines, is stated in Appendix A. Eq. (8) shows that interpolation based on Eq. (4) has an error bound
of 𝑂(ℎ4 ). Therefore, if the step length (ℎ) tends to zero, the error
1 ℎ𝐷
(𝜆𝑒−ℎ𝐷 + 2𝛾𝑒ℎ𝐷 + 𝜆𝑒ℎ𝐷 )𝑀𝑖 = (𝑒 − 2 + 𝑒−ℎ𝐷 ). rate tends to zero. To reduce the step length, we need to increase the
ℎ
number of samples used for interpolation.
ℎ 5ℎ
Let 𝜆 = 12
and 𝛾 = 12
, Eq. (5) has a fourth-order of accuracy, 𝑂(ℎ4 ). In the next section, we show how temporal resolution can be
Finally: increased by employing Eq. (4).
12
𝑀𝑖−1 + 10𝑀𝑖 + 𝑀𝑖+1 = (𝑦𝑖+1 − 2𝑦𝑖 + 𝑦𝑖−1 ). (6)
ℎ2
2.3. Increasing the frame rate using non-polynomial interpolation
To solve the system in Eq. (6), we must add two more conditions to
it. Therefore, we introduce two artificial boundary conditions, such
that their degree of accuracy is not less than the degree of accuracy As we will see in Section 3, in this paper we will use the proposed
of Eq. (6). This can be easily done using the method of undetermined non-polynomial interpolation to reconstruct missing frames between a
coefficients and the Taylor expansion as follows: specified number of frames in echocardiography images.
In general, the process of converting the sampling rate of a digital
⎧∑1 ′′ 1 ∑5 4
⎪ 𝑘=0 𝛾𝑘 𝑦𝑘 = ℎ ( 𝑘=0 𝜂𝑘 𝑦𝑘 ) + 𝑂(ℎ ) (𝑖 = 1) signal from one rate to another is called sampling rate conversion.
⎨∑1 ∑ (7)
1 5 Increasing the rate of a sampled signal is called up-sampling, whereas
⎪ 𝑘=0 𝛾𝑘 𝑦′′ = ℎ ( 𝑘=0 𝜂𝑘 𝑦𝑛−𝑘 ) + 𝑂(ℎ4 ) (𝑖 = 𝑛)
⎩ 𝑛−𝑘
decreasing the rate is called down-sampling. The proposed algorithm
works as follows. At first, a certain signal 𝑦(𝑡) is measured at known
where (𝛾0 , 𝛾1 ) = (10, 1) and (𝜂0 , 𝜂1 , 𝜂2 , 𝜂3 , 𝜂4 , 𝜂5 ) = ( 115
3ℎ
, − 1555
12ℎ
, 178
ℎ
,
773 151 33 sampled frames (i.e., the frames that are maintained after the down-
− 6ℎ , 3ℎ , − 4ℎ ). Eqs. (6) and (7) form a linear equation system with
sampling process). Then, by interpolating 𝑦(𝑡) by means of Eq. (4),
a strictly diagonally dominant matrix of coefficients.
we can create the midpoints of these frames, that are related to the
Now, the values of 𝑀𝑖 can be easily obtained by solving this linear
system. Therefore, Eq. (4) can be explicitly used for interpolation. In unknown frames. The steps of the reconstruction are given in Fig. 1.
the following, the error analysis of the method is presented to show that A shown in the figure, first an ultrasound clip is taken from the heart
the method has a high degree of validity, with a degree of accuracy of using an ultrasound device, then the video is converted into images.
𝑂(ℎ4 ). Then, the gap between the frames is reconstructed by our proposed
non-polynomial interpolation method. In this step, the signals received
2.2. Error analysis from the frames are reconstructed pixel by pixel using Eq. (4). After the
frames are completely reconstructed, then each frame is placed in its
Theorem 1. Eq. (4) defines a unique approximation 𝑃 (𝑡) and the error for place and the full video is reconstructed. Hence, this new interpolated
approximating 𝑦(𝑡) satisfies: video has more frames than the original video. This aspect is important
one needs to examine parts of the patient’s body that are moving
‖𝑒‖ = ‖𝑦(𝑡) − 𝑃 (𝑡)‖ ≤ 𝐶ℎ4 (8)
rapidly, such as the heart valves. The block diagram of the proposed
where 𝐶 = 1
384
max𝑖 |𝑦(4) 26 2
𝑖 |+ 3 𝜏 max𝑖 |𝑀𝑖 |. approach is shown Fig. 1.

3
S. Afrakhteh et al. Biomedical Signal Processing and Control 78 (2022) 104003

Fig. 1. Ultrasound video reconstruction algorithm.

2.4. Image quality metrics 2.4.2. Non-reference base method

For the non-reference case, we consider four models to evaluate the
We performed two types of experiments to confirm the effectiveness image quality. The first model is the speckle-index, which is defined as
of the proposed. In the following, we refer to these two types as ‘‘refer- follows [33]:
ence base’’ and ‘‘non-reference base’’, respectively. In the reference base
1 ∑ ∑ 𝜎(𝑖, 𝑗)
𝑀 𝑁
method, the constructed image is compared with the reference image. speckle-index = (13)
In the non-reference base method, only the output of the proposed 𝑀𝑁 𝑖=1 𝑗=1 𝜇(𝑖, 𝑗)
method is used to evaluate the quality of interpolation. where again 𝑀 × 𝑁 is the image size, 𝜇(𝑖, 𝑗) is the average of (𝑖, 𝑗)-
th pixel and its eight neighbors, and 𝜎(𝑖, 𝑗) is defined as the standard
2.4.1. Reference base method deviation of that nine-pixel Moore neighborhood.
To evaluate the interpolated images, we use the Mean Squared Error The second model is the image quality evaluator (NIQE). For the
(MSE) method, based on the following equation: sake of brevity, we do not report here its details. We refer the interested
reader to [34] for a full description of the NIQE metric.
1 ∑∑
𝑀 𝑁
𝑀𝑆𝐸 = (𝐼 − 𝐼𝑅𝐸𝐶𝑂𝑁 )2 (10) Finally, to compare the contrast parameters of the reconstructed
𝑀𝑁 𝑖=1 𝑗=1 𝑂𝑅𝐺
and original images, we consider two criteria, namely the contrast
where 𝑀 × 𝑁 is the image size (expressed in number of pixels), and ratio (CR) and the contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR), which are defined as
𝐼𝑂𝑅𝐺 and 𝐼𝑅𝐸𝐶𝑂𝑁 are the original and interpolated images respectively. in [33]:
Peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) and structural index similarity 𝐶𝑅 = |𝜇𝑓 − 𝜇𝑏 | (14)
(SSIM) are two other metrics that are extensively used for image quality
evaluation [32]. PSNR and SSIM are defined as follows: 𝐶𝑅
𝐶𝑁𝑅 = √ (15)
255 𝜎𝑏2 + 𝜎𝑓2
𝑃 𝑆𝑁𝑅(𝐼𝑂𝑅𝐺 , 𝐼𝑅𝐸𝐶𝑂𝑁 ) = 10 × log10 ( ), (11)
𝑀𝑆𝐸
2𝜇𝑅𝐸𝐶𝑂𝑁 × 𝜇𝑂𝑅𝐺 + 𝐶1 where 𝜇𝑓 and 𝜇𝑏 are the average intensities in selected foreground
𝑆𝑆𝐼𝑀(𝐼𝑂𝑅𝐺 , 𝐼𝑅𝐸𝐶𝑂𝑁 ) = and background regions, and 𝜎𝑓 and 𝜎𝑏 are the standard deviations of
2
2𝜇𝑅𝐸𝐶𝑂𝑁 2
+ 𝜇𝑂𝑅𝐺 + 𝐶1
(12) these regions. In fact, CR is the ratio between two levels of brightness,
2𝜎𝑅𝐸𝐶𝑂𝑁 × 𝜎𝑂𝑅𝐺 + 𝐶2 while CNR is an indicator of the contrast between two different regions,
× ,
2
2𝜎𝑅𝐸𝐶𝑂𝑁 2
+ 𝜎𝑂𝑅𝐺 + 𝐶2 relative to the noise level.
where 𝜇 and 𝜎 are the mean and variance of the image intensities. 3. Results and discussion
255 is the highest intensity level of the images (for 8-bit images). The
constants 𝐶1 and 𝐶2 are used to prevent the denominator of the two In the following, three types of data are used to demonstrate in-
fractions in SSIM from becoming zero, and are usually assumed to be: terpolation efficiency using non-polynomial functions. In Section 3.1,
𝐶1 = (0.01 × 255)2 and 𝐶2 = (0.03 × 255)2 . time signals in the range [0, 1] sec are simulated using non-polynomial
From the definition of PSNR, it is understood that its value is equal bases. Section 3.2 contains a simulated dataset of 241 frames, with
to infinity when the original image and the reconstructed image are the sizes of 500 × 500, where frames contain circles with different radius.
same (i.e., 𝑀𝑆𝐸 → 0). Increasing the difference between the original Finally, Section 3.3 refers to a sample of clinical data including two
image and the reconstructed image makes the PSNR decrease. As for complete cycles of expansion and contraction of the heart, for a total
the SSIM definition, the first fraction is a function that compares the of 114 frames. All our calculations1 have been performed on a 64-bit
brightness of the two images. The maximum value of this fraction is Windows system with Intel⃝ R CoreTM i5-4210u CPU @1.70–2.40 GHz
one, and occurs when 𝜇𝑅𝐸𝐶𝑂𝑁 = 𝜇𝑂𝑅𝐺 . The second fraction in the SSIM and 4 GB RAM.
equation compares the contrast of the two images. In general, the SSIM
metric ranges in [0, 1] [32]. A value of one for SSIM corresponds to the
1
ideal case of two images that are the same. The source code will be made available upon request.

4
S. Afrakhteh et al. Biomedical Signal Processing and Control 78 (2022) 104003

Table 1
Maximum absolute error for Example 3.1 (the boldface indicates the best value for
each signal).
𝑦𝑚 (𝑡𝑖 ) Cubic spline B-spline Non-polynomial (𝜏 = 0.01)
𝑦1 (𝑡𝑖 ) 1.4 × 10−7 3.5 × 10−12 𝟏.𝟕 × 𝟏𝟎−𝟏𝟓
𝑦2 (𝑡𝑖 ) 5.6 × 10−6 4.5 × 10−7 𝟏.𝟐 × 𝟏𝟎−𝟕
𝑦3 (𝑡𝑖 ) 𝟐.𝟎 × 𝟏𝟎−𝟕 3.6 × 10−6 9.3 × 10−7
𝑦4 (𝑡𝑖 ) 8.1 × 10−7 7.2 × 10−7 𝟏.𝟑 × 𝟏𝟎−𝟕
𝑦5 (𝑡𝑖 ) 6.5 × 10−4 𝟓.𝟒 × 𝟏𝟎−𝟔 5.5 × 10−6
𝑦6 (𝑡𝑖 ) 1.5 × 10−3 6.2 × 10−7 𝟏.𝟔 × 𝟏𝟎−𝟖

3.1. Time signals

We compare the interpolation error obtained by the proposed non-

polynomial interpolation functions with that obtained by cubic spline
and B-spline functions. For this first example, we consider simple time
signals. The reason for using these signals is that they are based on
oscillating functions and can better evaluate the flexibility of methods Fig. 2. Original frame.
for interpolation. Table 1 shows the maximum absolute error of poly-
nomial and non-polynomial interpolation for 6 different signals 𝑦𝑚 (𝑡𝑖 )
defined as follows:
∑
𝑚
𝑦𝑚 (𝑡𝑖 ) = 3 + 5𝑡𝑖 + 𝑘 sin(𝜏𝑘 𝑡𝑖 ), 𝑚 = 1, 2, … , 6 (16)
𝑘=1

where 𝜏𝑘 = 𝑘, 𝑡𝑖 = (𝑖 − 1)𝛥𝑡, 𝛥𝑡 = 20 ms, 𝑡1 = 0, 𝑡𝑛 = 1 sec, 𝑛 = 50.

According to the information reported in Table 1, the approximation
error of the time signals of Example 3.1 obtained with the proposed
method is less or comparable to the best methods based on cubic spline
and B-spline.

3.2. Simulated data

This dataset concerns a short-axis view of a left ventricle that

looks like a contraction and dilation tube and was created using the
Autodesk 3ds Max software [35]. First, even-numbered frames have
been removed, while odd-numbered frames have been used as a sample;
or, in other words, down-sampling was applied with a factor of 2. In Fig. 3. Interpolated frame.
the online Supplementary Material, Video Simulated.ds2.avi is
related to the frames reconstructed with the proposed non-polynomial
Table 2
interpolation. This video is made at a rate of 40 frames per second. Maximum absolute error for Section 3.3 (down-sampling = 2).
Figs. 2 and 3 show, respectively, an example of the original image, and B-spline of order 𝑘 [2] Non-polynomial (ours)
the corresponding image reconstructed with the proposed method. The
𝑘, 𝜏 𝑘=2 𝑘=3 𝑘=4 𝜏 = 10 𝜏=1 𝜏 = 0.01
MSE across frames achieved by our method is 0.3417 (a fairly small MSE 0.6278 0.6154 0.6411 0.5685 0.3195 0.2007
error indeed), while the average SSIM is 0.8344 (that differs from the
ideal state by only 0.1656). Fig. 4 compares the intensity interpolated
signal obtained by the proposed non-polynomial interpolation method
(continuous red line) with the original intensity signal (continuous blue About the setting of the time step in this application, assuming
line) for a specific pixel at coordinate (250, 250) in the frames. down-sampling 2, the number of samples used for the interpolation
Also for the interpolated signal shown in Fig. 4, which is related to is 57. In this case, since we are facing a problem on the interval [0,
the simulated data containing 250 frames, assuming down-sampling 2, 1] (i.e., the 57 frames are on points 𝑡0 to 𝑡56 ), the time step length is
the time step length is equal to ℎ = 𝑏−𝑎 = 1−0 1
= 124 . obtained as ℎ = 𝑏−𝑎𝑛
= 1−0
56
= 561
.
𝑛 124
Fig. 5 shows the relation between MSE and down-sampling. As can
3.3. Clinical data be seen, when the number of samples used to reconstruct the images
decreases, the error increases. In other words, if we have less frames
In this case we evaluate the efficiency of the proposed method per second, the reconstruction accuracy will be lower, as expected.
on echocardiographic data. The data were extracted from a Vivid For illustration purposes, Figs. 6–8 compare the signals interpo-
3 echocardiograph with a 2.0 MHz probe. As mentioned earlier, in lated with the proposed method, based on different values of the free
echocardiography, increasing the frame rate plays an important role in parameter (𝜏), with the original signal related to pixels at a fixed coor-
increasing the accuracy of disease diagnosis. Therefore, we have tried dinate (250, 250) in all frames. As shown in the figures, the intensity
to increase the frame rate in these data with the proposed method. In values are well approximated by the proposed method. Moreover, it
the following, we analyze the obtained results from different criteria. can noticed that small, positive 𝜏 values (close to zero) allow better
Table 2 shows the MSE for the non-polynomial interpolation method as approximations of sudden jumps in pixel intensity.
well as the method used in [2], that is b-spline or order 𝑘. The results In the following, we compare the images obtained using the non-
show that as the free parameter approaches zero (𝜏 → 0) the accuracy of polynomial interpolation method with the original images in terms of
the proposed method results better than that obtained with the method noise-related metrics. For this analysis, we report in Table 3 the contrast
in [2]. measures for the areas specified in Figs. 9 and 10 (see the background

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S. Afrakhteh et al. Biomedical Signal Processing and Control 78 (2022) 104003

Fig. 4. Comparison of the reconstructed signal 𝑃 (𝑡) with the original signal 𝑦(𝑡) for a fixed coordinate (250, 250) in all frames.

Fig. 5. MSE achieved by the proposed method for different down-sampling rates for Section 3.3. For down-sampling rates equal to 3 and 5, 33% and 20% of the original samples
were used for interpolation, respectively.

Fig. 6. Comparison of original signal (continuous blue line), proposed method (continuous red line and 𝜏 = 10) and proposed method (continuous green line and 𝜏 = 0.01) for
down-sampling = 2. This signal corresponds to pixel (250, 250) in all frames.

and foreground regions, indicated by the yellow and red rectangles,
respectively), for the original image and the proposed method for
different values of down-sampling rate. The two figures and the cor-
responding values reported in the table are related to frame 20 and 54
in the dataset. Since each complete cycle contains 57 frames, frames 20
and 54 were chosen for being the ones corresponding to the beginning
and the end of the cycle, respectively. The noteworthy point in the
table is that the reported values do not differ significantly from those
obtained from the original image, even when 20% of the samples
were used for interpolation. For example, for sample 20, the difference
between the CNR of the original image and the CNR of the image made
using 20% of the samples is 0.004. In addition, when the samples are
reduced from 50% to 20%, the CNR increases from 2.24 to 2.26, which
indicates that there is not much noise due to the significant reduction of
the samples. Similar results are obtained for frame 54. Also, as can be
seen from Fig. 9, the mitral valve is clearly visible in the reconstructed
frames. According to these results, the proposed method has a high
ability to reconstruct different frames.
As an additional confirmation of the results, Table 4 reports five
image quality criteria for 11 selected reconstructed frames using the

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S. Afrakhteh et al. Biomedical Signal Processing and Control 78 (2022) 104003

Fig. 7. Comparison of original signal (continuous blue line), proposed method (continuous red line and 𝜏 = 10) and proposed method (continuous green line and 𝜏 = 0.01) for
down-sampling = 3. This signal corresponds to pixel (250, 250) in all frames.

Fig. 8. Comparison of original signal (continuous blue line), proposed method (continuous red line and 𝜏 = 10) and proposed method (continuous green line and 𝜏 = 0.01) for
down-sampling = 5. This signal corresponds to pixel (250, 250) in all frames.

Table 5
Table 3 Mean MSE, SSIM and CNR (dB) across frames for cubic spline interpolation(CSI),
Contrast values for the original frames and various down-sampling (D-S) rates using B-spline interpolation(BSI), Sparse representation(SR), and non-polynomial spline inter-
the proposed non-polynomial interpolation (NPI). polation(NPS) for 𝜏 = 0.01 and down-sampling = 2. The boldface indicates the better
Frame 20 Frame 54 results obtained (excluding the original images).
𝜇𝑏 𝜇𝑓 𝐶𝑅 𝐶𝑁𝑅 𝜇𝑏 𝜇𝑓 𝐶𝑅 𝐶𝑁𝑅 Method Original CSI BSI [2] SR [9] NPS (ours)
Original 93.78 60.53 33.24 2.18 93.86 55.75 38.11 2.49 MSE – 0.521 0.438 0.903 0.201
NPI D-S 2 93.72 59.93 33.78 2.24 93.14 56.28 36.86 2.39 SSIM 1.000 0.948 0.983 0.991 0.999
NPI D-S 3 92.98 59.62 33.35 2.23 91.75 56.29 35.45 2.33 CNR 2.41 1.61 1.63 1.12 2.31
NPI D-S 5 93.60 59.83 33.77 2.25 89.78 59.15 30.62 1.95

Table 4 proposed non-polynomial interpolation functions. The MSE column

Image quality evaluation for some selected frames from the echocardiographic data shows the Mean Squared Error for the 11 frames obtained using non-
(down-sampling = 2, 𝜏 = 10). polynomial interpolation. As can be seen, the highest MSE is related
Frame MSE PSNR (dB) SSIM Speckle-index NIQE to the first frame in the table, which however is an acceptable value.
5 0.2727 28.73 0.9999 1.4540 6.1054 About 90% of the values in the PSNR column are above 30, which
10 0.1896 34.03 1.0000 1.4983 5.5315 indicates a very good PSNR level. The SSIM column shows in most cases
15 0.2474 31.30 1.0000 1.4569 5.9343
1, which is the ideal case.
20 0.1540 32.48 1.0000 1.4759 5.8503
25 0.2361 30.62 1.0000 1.5039 5.8736 Table 5 compares the mean value of MSE, SSIM and CNR (across
30 0.2396 30.48 1.0000 1.5237 5.7121 frames) for three different methods, ours included, which shows that
35 0.2274 31.16 1.0000 1.5519 6.3948 the image reconstructed with our proposed method is more similar to
40 0.1918 33.03 1.0000 1.5705 5.4993
the reference image. So, it confirms that we can improve the temporal
45 0.2092 32.39 1.0000 1.5363 5.9803
50 0.1477 34.24 1.0000 1.5779 5.7198 resolution by the proposed reconstruction technique while the image
55 0.2595 31.53 1.0000 1.5466 5.7868 quality is not degraded significantly.
Finally, the processing time for different up/down-sampling rates
with the proposed method is reported in the Table 6. As can be seen,
with increasing sampling rates, the running time decreases. The reason

7
S. Afrakhteh et al.
Fig. 9. Selected regions for calculating the contrast measures (frame 20).
Table 6
Processing time (s) for down-sampling (D-S) and up-sampling
(U-S).
D-S = 2 D-S = 5 U-S = 2
Time to run (s) 60.3 s 53.2 s 437.2 s
for the reduction in computation time is that when fewer samples are
used for interpolation, the computational cost is reduced.
In the Supplementary Material, the file original.echo.avi
contains an original echocardiographic video with a frame size of
411 × 481. The file named as nonpolynomial.echo.ds2.avi is
a reconstructed video obtained by means of non-polynomial interpola-
tion, where 𝜏 is set to 0.01 and the odd frames are used for reconstruc-
tion. Also, the two files named as nonpolynomial.echo.ds3.avi
and nonpolynomial.echo.ds5.avi are obtained by the proposed
method with down-sampling set to 3 and 5, respectively, where we can
notice that the accuracy of the reconstruction decreases as the down-
sampling rate increases. It should be noted that in all the reconstructed
videos, the frame rate in the video is 40 frames per second. To view the
reconstructed videos at a higher frame rate, we performed up-sampling
on the original frames by using the proposed method. Two examples
of reconstructed videos with up-sampling at 40 and 80 frames per
second can be seen in files nonpolynomial.echo.us2fr40.avi
and nonpolynomial.echo.us2fr80.avi, respectively.
Compared to other interpolation methods, the proposed approach
has a control parameter (𝜏), which can be used to control the error
8
Biomedical Signal Processing and Control 78 (2022) 104003
rate and allow more flexibility in the interpolation. The noise level can
be controlled by adjusting this parameter. Generally, a lower value of
this parameter will result in a smoother reconstructed signal. On the
other hand, to preserve high-frequency information, such as speckle
noise and image edges, larger values of 𝜏 are needed.
Despite its advantages, the proposed approach has limitations.
Firstly, equal step lengths result in regularly selected sample frames. In
other words, frame creation can only be done with a fixed frame rate.
To tackle this limitation, specific numerical methods may be used in
which unequal time step lengths can be selected. Algebraic convergence
speed of the method is another weakness compared to methods such
as radial basis functions and spectral method, which have exponential
convergence speed. In addition, the suggested method is only based on
the analysis of time-domain pixel intensity values, while spatial infor-
mation might also be considered to perform accurate interpolations.
Indeed a given structure is not necessarily represented by the same
pixels over time. Another limitation of the proposed approach is that
it assumes constant pixel displacement between successive frames. If
this criterion is not met, the heart structure may be misplaced during
the interpolation procedure. To solve this problem, the combination of
interpolation and motion compensation techniques is recommended.
4. Conclusions
The main goal of this paper was to propose a method to increase
the frame rate in echocardiographic images. The method used is based
on the principles of interpolation and is considered a post-processing
S. Afrakhteh et al.
Fig. 10. Selected regions for calculating the contrast measures (frame 54).
method since it is applied to the reconstructed images. While interpo-
lation has been used for image reconstruction in previous literature,
we found that, since in echocardiographic clips parts that move faster
are very important for medical diagnoses, more specific bases should be
used other than the traditionally adopted polynomial bases. Polynomial
bases produce larger errors in segments of the data characterized by
large changes. The main findings of the paper are: first, the non-
polynomial interpolation outperforms polynomial interpolation when
facing non-smooth data. Second, as these non-polynomial functions are
based on continuous and infinitely differentiable functions, they also
retain their smooth properties. In addition to the features mentioned
above, the proposed interpolation includes an adjusting parameter (𝜏)
that can be tuned to control the error. Another advantage is that the
proposed approach was capable to increase the temporal resolution
of echocardiography images up to 4 times without degrading image
quality. Specifically, this technique performed better than the exist-
ing methods when applied to echocardiography data, as shown in
Section 3. Also, theoretically, it has been proved that the proposed
method leads to higher degrees of reconstruction accuracy. Finally, the
suggested technique can prevent quality degradation at the temporal
boundaries. To this end, an artificial boundary based on a mix of
indeterminate coefficients and Taylor expansion methods is applied.
In the numerical experiments, the proposed method has been first
tested on synthetic 1D signals, then on a sample of artificial 2D data,
and finally on a clinical dataset. In all the tested settings, the proposed
non-polynomial achieved promising results, also in comparison with
the state-of-the-art available techniques.
9
Biomedical Signal Processing and Control 78 (2022) 104003
Given that in consecutive frames the location of the moving parts
in the image changes, and that with our method only the pixels at
a fixed location are used for the interpolation, including the pixel’s
neighbors (which are probably the next destinations of each focal pixel
in subsequent frames) in the interpolation process could be considered
as future work. As another suggestion, the application of the proposed
non-polynomial interpolation method could also be evaluated in the
pre-processing stage, to increase the frame rate in some modalities of
ultrasound imaging, such as linear imaging and plane wave imaging
(PWI) [36,37], and synthetic transmit aperture (STA) [38].
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Sajjad Afrakhteh: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Val-
idation, Writing – original draft. Hamed Jalilian: Conceptualization,
Methodology, Software, Validation, Writing – original draft. Giovanni
Iacca: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing – review & editing,
Supervision, Project administration. Libertario Demi: Conceptualiza-
tion, Methodology, Writing – review & editing, Supervision, Project
administration.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-
cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to
influence the work reported in this paper.
S. Afrakhteh et al. Biomedical Signal Processing and Control 78 (2022) 104003

Data availability Similar to what was done above we have:

6 ℎ𝐷
Data will be made available on request. (𝑒−ℎ𝐷 + 4 + 𝑒ℎ𝐷 )𝑀𝑙 = (𝑒 − 2 + 𝑒−ℎ𝐷 )𝑦𝑙 .
ℎ2
By expanding in powers of ℎ𝐷 and simplifying, we obtain:
Acknowledgment
1
|𝑀𝑙 − 𝑦′′ 2
𝑙 | ≤ 𝑑ℎ , 𝑑= max |𝑦(4)
𝑙
| (A.6)
We would like to acknowledge and give warm thanks of Dr. Hamid 2
Behnam for his great suggestions about the present work and for Therefore, the accuracy of the method presented in this paper is two
making his clinical data available for this research. degrees higher than that of similar methods, such as cubic polynomial
spline.
Appendix A. Consistency relation error for non-polynomial inter-
polation Appendix B. Supplementary data

This part presents the error analysis for the consistency relation of Supplementary material related to this article can be found online
the non-polynomial and the cubic spline. According to the analysis, at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bspc.2022.104003.
the accuracy of the non-polynomial interpolation is two degrees higher
than that of the cubic spline.
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