SURF imaging beams in an aberrative medium: Generation and postprocessing enhancement

This paper presents numerical simulations of dual-frequency second-order ultrasound field (SURF) reverberation suppression transmit-pulse complexes. Such propagation was previously studied in a homogeneous medium. In this work, the propagation path includes a strongly aberrating body wall modeled by a sequence of delay screens. Each of the applied SURF transmit pulse complexes consists of a high-frequency 3.5-MHz imaging pulse combined with a low-frequency 0.5-MHz sound speed manipulation pulse. Furthermore, the feasibility of two signal postprocessing methods are investigated using the aberrated transmit SURF beams. These methods have previously been shown to adjust the depth of maximum SURF reverberation suppression within a homogeneous medium. The need for this study arises because imaging situations in which reverberation suppression is useful are also likely to produce pulse wave front distortion (aberration). Such distortions could potentially produce time delays that cancel the accumulated propagation time delay needed for the SURF reverberation suppression technique. Results show that both the generation of synthetic SURF reverberation suppression imaging transmit beams and the following postprocessing adjustments are attainable even when a body wall introduces time delays which are larger than previously reported delays measured on human body wall specimens.