Improved beamforming performance using pulsed plane wave decomposition

Abstract

A tool for calculating the beamformer setup associated with a specified pulsed acoustic field is presented. The method is named Pulsed Plane Wave Decomposition (PPWD) and is based on the decomposition of a pulsed acoustic field into a set of PPWs at a given depth. Each PPW can be propagated to the location of the elements of an array transducer by a time delay. The contribution of each propagated PPW is summed to form one time function for each array element (the BMF matrix). This approach gives the beamformer setup needed to obtain a close approximation to the desired bounded pulsed acoustic field without involving any optimization scheme. The approximation arises due to the limited size of the acoustic aperture and the spatial sampling property of the array transducer. Thus, the acoustical field can be designed according to the imaging needs. The method is demonstrated by examples in the 2D space by analytical equations, simulation, and experimental results.