Aberration correction with broad transmit beams in medical ultrasound

摘要

Aberration estimation uses cross correlation of receive-focused transmit element data. A set of sequentially fired broad transmit beams insonify an object from different steering angles. Each transmit beam emanates from an actual or a virtual transmit element. For every firing, a receive beamformer forms a transmit element image of the insonified region by focusing the received signals. An estimator estimates aberration by cross correlating or comparing the transmit element images. Where a virtual transmit element is used, the virtual transmit element images are back propagated to an actual transmit element position before aberration estimation. The estimations are used to form corrected transmit element images which are then summed pre-detection to form a high-resolution synthetic transmit aperture. Alternatively, the estimations are used to improve conventional focused-transmit imaging.

主权项

1. A method for ultrasound aberration estimation, the method comprising:
insonifying with first and second broad beams at first and second angles, respectively, from first and second excited transmit elements, the first and second broad transmit beams being diverging or unfocussed over an entire region of interest including a plurality of spatial locations; receiving first and second data sets of signals from a transducer, the receiving being in response to, respectively, the first and second excited transmit elements; focusing, by a receiver, the first and second data sets of the signals, the focusing resulting in first and second multi-dimensional images corresponding to the first and second broad beams, respectively, the first and second multi-dimensional images each representing the plurality of spatial locations; estimating an aberration as a function of comparing the first and second multi-dimensional images resulting from the receiver focusing; and correcting the first data set, the second data set, the first image, the second image, a subsequently received data set, or a subsequently focused image as a function of the aberration.