High frame rate imaging using parallel transmission of focused coded fields [medical ultrasound imaging applications]

Author

Misaridis, Thanassis ; Munk, Peter

Author_Institution

Inst. of Commun. & Comput. Systerns, Nat. Tech. Univ. of Athens, Greece

Volume

2

fYear

2004

fDate

23-27 Aug. 2004

Firstpage

1417

Abstract

We have previously presented a numerical method for calculating the excitation signals on individual elements, in order to transmit multi-focused pulsed beams in parallel. This paper shows the design of FM-coded focused fields and how these fields can yield more strongly focused fields or higher frame rate. Simulated images show the implementation of the method using only 4 emissions. Neighboring beams to be formed in parallel use different codes with a cross-correlation of 20 dB. Such a cross-correlation would be insufficient using a conventional delay-and-sum beamformer. In the proposed system, the worst-case beam interference is -46 dB, making it possible to obtain images of similar resolution to conventional imaging at very high frame rates. Additionally, coding partially compensates for the SNR loss that is due to multi-focusing using only a few emissions.

Keywords

array signal processing; biomedical ultrasonics; correlation methods; image resolution; matched filters; modulation coding; ultrasonic focusing; SNR; coded phased array imaging; cross-correlation; element excitation signal calculation; focused coded field parallel transmission; high frame rate imaging; image resolution; matched filtering; medical ultrasound imaging; multiple-focused pulsed beams; worst-case beam interference; Concurrent computing; Delay; Focusing; Image coding; Image resolution; Interference; Matched filters; Phased arrays; Transducers; Ultrasonic imaging;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Ultrasonics Symposium, 2004 IEEE

ISSN

1051-0117

Print_ISBN

0-7803-8412-1

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ULTSYM.2004.1418065

Filename

1418065