Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, USA.
IEEE Trans Ultrason Ferroelectr Freq Control. 2012 Oct;59(10):2210-25. doi: 10.1109/TUFFC.2012.2447.
Focusing and imaging qualities of an ultrasound imaging system that uses aberration correction were experimentally investigated as functions of the number of parallel channels. Front-end electronics that consolidate signals from multiple physical elements can be used to lower hardware and computational costs by reducing the number of parallel channels. However, the signals from sparse arrays of synthetic elements yield poorer aberration estimates. In this study, aberration estimates derived from synthetic arrays of varying element sizes are evaluated by comparing compensated receive focuses, compensated transmit focuses, and compensated b-scan images of a point target and a cyst phantom. An array of 80 x 80 physical elements with a pitch of 0.6 x 0.6 mm was used for all of the experiments and the aberration was produced by a phantom selected to mimic propagation through abdominal wall. The results show that aberration correction derived from synthetic arrays with pitches that have a diagonal length smaller than 70% of the correlation length of the aberration yield focuses and images of approximately the same quality. This connection between correlation length of the aberration and synthetic element size provides a guideline for determining the number of parallel channels that are required when designing imaging systems that employ aberration correction.
我们对使用像差校正的超声成像系统的聚焦和成像质量进行了实验研究，作为并行通道数量的函数。通过减少并行通道的数量，整合来自多个物理元件的信号的前端电子设备可以降低硬件和计算成本。然而，来自稀疏合成元件阵列的信号会产生较差的像差估计。在这项研究中，通过比较补偿后的接收焦点、补偿后的发射焦点以及点目标和囊肿体模的补偿 B 扫描图像，评估了不同尺寸合成元件阵列的像差估计。所有实验均使用了一个 80x80 个物理元件的阵列，其间距为 0.6x0.6mm，并且像差是由一个选择的仿体产生的，该仿体模拟了穿过腹壁的传播。结果表明，来自具有对角线长度小于像差相关长度 70%的间距的合成阵列的像差校正产生的焦点和图像具有大致相同的质量。像差的相关长度与合成元件尺寸之间的这种关系为设计使用像差校正的成像系统时确定所需的并行通道数量提供了指导。
