Efficient parallel receive beam forming for phased array imaging using phase rotation [medical US application]

A method for multiple beam formation in the near field using phase rotation (i.e., Fourier inversion) is presented. This method, if used in conjunction with a digital beamformer described by M. O´Donnell et al. (IEEE Ultrasonics Sym. Proc., vol.3, p.1499-1502, 1990), can produce multiple simultaneous beams of high precision with little increase in the complexity of the beamformer. This method combines dynamic focusing along a single beam with range-independent spatial Fourier processing to generate a set of high-quality simultaneous receive beams in the neighborhood of the dynamically focused beam. This system produces images of comparable quality to conventional beamformers but at twice the frame rate