Measurement of guided mode wave vectors by analysis of the transfer matrix obtained with multi-emitters and multi-receivers in contact

Abstract

Different quantitative ultrasound techniques are currently developed for clinical assessment of human bone status. This paper is dedicated to axial transmission: emitters and receivers are linearly arranged on the same side of the skeletal site, preferentially the forearm. In several clinical studies, the signal velocity of the earliest temporal event has been shown to discriminate osteoporotic patients from healthy subjects. However, a multi parameter approach might be relevant to improve bone diagnosis and this be could be achieved by accurate measurement of guided waves wave vectors. For clinical purposes and easy access to the measurement site, the length probe is limited to about 10 mm. The limited number of acquisition scan points on such a short distance reduces the efficiency of conventional signal processing techniques, such as spatio-temporal Fourier transform. The performance of time-frequency techniques was shown to be moderate in other studies. Thus, optimised signal processing is a critical point for a reliable estimate of guided mode wave vectors. Toward this end, a technique, taking benefit of using both multiple emitters and multiple receivers, is proposed. The guided mode wave vectors are obtained using a projection in the singular vectors basis. Those are determined by the singular values decomposition of the transmission matrix between the two arrays at different frequencies. This technique enables us to recover accurately guided waves wave vectors for moderately large array.