Coded excitation scheme for acoustic radiation push pulse compression

Shear wave elasticity imaging using acoustic radiation force consists of exciting a shear wave by a “push pulse” and tracking the shear wave by ultrafast imaging. The push pulse is radiated at several hundred micro seconds, which is about 100 times higher than the pulse used in imaging. We propose a new pushing-and-tracking sequence, coded push pulse excitation, which can decrease energy density of the push pulse with respect to time by shortening the burst duration or reducing the amplitude without degrading the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the observed shear wave propagation. Phantom experiments successfully demonstrated the validity of the proposed scheme implemented with Golay codes.