Assessment of harmonic source correction for ultrasound medical imaging

Abstract

Tissue velocity and attenuation inhomogeneities reduce ultrasound image quality in many patients. Over the years a number of methods have been developed to estimate the corrective delays necessary for phase aberration correction. Past methods were based on assumptions of the target or required a separate transducer acting as a transponder point source. A method is proposed which creates a known acoustical source in the tissue suitable for wavefront correction without a priori assumptions of the target or requiring a point source transponder. This method was tested with multiple electronically produced aberrations with RMS focusing errors of 0.25π radians, 0.44π radians, and 0.87π radians at 4.17 MHz. These aberrators were corrected using excised pork kidneys and on the left kidney of human volunteers as targets. Waveform correction on pork kidney led to an improvement in imaging beam amplitude and side-lobe level. Waveform correction on human subjects for a 0.87π radians RMS error aberrator led to a 15.4 dB improvement in imaging beam amplitude and an 11.8 dB improvement in side-lobe level. This method shows promise of overcoming the limitations of previous phase correction methods.