Body wall aberration correction in medical ultrasonic images using synthetic-aperture data

Body-wall refraction has been implicated in degrading and distorting medical ultrasonic images. Even with sophisticated image-forming systems refraction imposes a limitation on image quality. A forward propagation technique has been developed to correct for the refraction at the fat/muscle boundaries in the subcutaneous tissues. A synthetic-aperture scanning approach has been used to evaluate the technique. This permits the procedure to be carried out on a single set of ultrasonic data from a live patient, making rescanning, with its associated effects of tissue movement, unnecessary