Ultrasonic spatial compounding with curved array scanheads

Abstract

An ultrasonic diagnostic imaging system is used to produce spatially compounded ultrasonic images with beams transmitted in multiple look directions from a curved array scanhead. The beam steering is a function of both the curvature of the curved array and electronic beam steering. The beams may be steered in groups of parallel beams, or in groups which have a common angular orientation to their points of origin along the array. The describe embodiments provide advantages in beamforming and registration coefficient usage, sampling uniformity, speckle reduction uniformity, and a larger area of maximum compounding effect.