Abstract
Starting from key ultrasound imaging features such as spatial and temporal resolution, contrast, penetration depth, array aperture, and field-of-view (FOV) size, the reader will be guided through the pros and cons of the main ultrasound beam-forming techniques. The technicalities and the rationality behind the different driving schemes and reconstruction modalities will be reviewed, highlighting the requirements for their implementation and their suitability for specific applications. Techniques such as multi-line acquisition (MLA), multi-line transmission (MLT), plane and diverging wave imaging, and synthetic aperture will be discussed, as well as more recent beam-forming modalities.
Highlights
In ultrasound medical imaging, beam forming in essence deals with the shaping of the spatial distribution of the pressure field amplitude in the volume of interest, and the consequent recombination of the received ultrasound signals for the purpose of generating images
One can navigate through the different techniques using the following question as a compass: which imaging features are important to my application of interest, and which features can I sacrifice? There is, no ultimate beam-forming approach, and the answer to the previous question strongly depends on what one wants to see in the images
Are the key imaging features that will be considered in this paper to review the different beam-forming techniques, along with their descriptions: Spatial resolution: the smallest spatial distance for which two scatterers can be distinguished in the final image
Summary
Beam forming in essence deals with the shaping of the spatial distribution of the pressure field amplitude in the volume of interest, and the consequent recombination of the received ultrasound signals for the purpose of generating images. Field of view (FOV): the sizes of the area represented by the obtained images This feature is generally expressed in cm or cm. The following wave equation can be applied to model the pressure field generated by an arbitrary source which propagates in a homogeneous medium [1]:. For a monochromatic point source, i.e., S(x, t) = δ(x) cos(2π f 0 t), the solution to this equation is known [1], and can be expressed as: P0 In this equation, p MPs (x, t) is the pressure field generated by the monochromatic point source, P0 is the source amplitude, and f 0 is the source frequency. From Equation (4), we can conclude that by applying appropriate phase coefficients, we can maximize the pressure field generated by an arbitrarily shaped source, and that the larger the aperture, the higher the pressure field. A table is presented where the peculiarities of each modality are highlighted
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