Object dependent compensation of missing array elements

Due to the discontinuous nature of acoustic windows into the body, a set of phased array elements may be inactive in clinical applications. They may produce undesired beamforming artifacts and degrade spatial and contrast resolution. To minimize undesired artifacts, an algorithm using multiple receive beams and the total-least-squares method is proposed. Results show that this algorithm can effectively reduce imperfections in the point spread function of the imager. Combined with local scatterer statistics, the algorithm is modified for compensation on distributed scattering sources. Results also indicate that compensated images are comparable to full array images. This method can enhance detection of low contrast lesions using large phased array apertures