Abstract
Plane-wave ultrasound imaging (PWUS) has become an important method of ultrasound imaging in recent years as its frame rate has exceeded 10,000 frames per second, allowing ultrasound to be used for two-dimensional shear wave detection and functional brain imaging. However, compared to the traditional focusing and scanning method, PWUS images always suffer from a degradation of lateral resolution and contrast. To improve the image quality of PWUS, many different beamforming algorithms have been proposed and verified. Yet the influence of transducer structure is rarely studied. For this paper, the influence of using an acoustic lens for PWUS was evaluated. Two linear array transducers were fabricated. One was not self-focalized in the elevation direction (non-elevation-focalized transducer, NEFT); the other one was a traditional elevation-focalized transducer (EFT). An initial simulation was conducted to show the influence of elevation focusing. Then the images obtained with NEFT on a standard ultrasound imaging phantom were compared with those obtained with EFT. It was demonstrated that, in a relatively deep region, the contrast of an NEFT image is better than that of an EFT image. These results indicate that a more sophisticated design of ultrasound transducer would further improve the image quality of PWUS.
Highlights
In conventional ultrasound imaging (US), one 2-D image is acquired by a set of scan lines
In plane-wave ultrasound imaging (PWUS), all the elements of the linear-array transducer are excited at the same time and a plane-wave emission is formed; the echo signals are processed by the beamformer algorithms to generate one 2-D image [8,9,10,11]
The images obtained on the second simulated phantom
Summary
In conventional ultrasound imaging (US), one 2-D image is acquired by a set of scan lines (usually 128 or 256 scan lines). To expedite the frame rate, plane-wave ultrasound imaging (PWUS), where the frame rate can be significantly increased to 10,000–20,000 fps, has been well-studied in recent years. PWUS can significantly increase the imaging frame rate, the image quality degrades compared to a conventional US image if only the traditional beamformer algorithm is used. To solve this problem, complex algorithms such as coherent compounding [12]. 22 of compounding [12] or regularization based on compressive sensing frame [6,7,13,14] have been Another which may modification be helpful forwhich enhancing thehelpful image for quality of PWUS, i.e., changing proposedmodification and h studied.
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