A Computer-implemented Method For Beamforming Of Ultrasound Channel Data

The invention is directed to a computer-implemented method for beamforming of ultrasound channel data (2) to obtain a beamformed image, the method comprising the steps of receiving ultrasound channel data (2); determining an initial estimate of the beamformed image as intermediate beamformed image data; performing at least one iteration of a processing operation which comprises a data consistency step (6) followed by a prior step (8), wherein the data consistency step (6) takes as input the channel data (2) and the intermediate beamformed image data, performs at least one processing step (14, 16, 50, 56) which is designed to improve the consistency of the intermediate beamformed image data (10) with the channel data (2) and outputs updated intermediate beamformed image data (7); the prior step (8) takes as input the updated intermediate beamformed image data (7) and performs at least one processing step, which uses a prior assumption on the beamformed image data, to improve the updated intermediate beamformed image data (7) and outputs an improved updated intermediate image data (12); outputting the improved updated intermediate image data (12) as the beamformed image (20).