Sparse two-dimensional wideband ultrasound transducer arrays

摘要

An ultrasonic imaging system employs a thinned array of transducer elements in order to reduce the number of signal processing channels. The transducer elements are reduced in number and then selectively located at grid positions in a pattern which reduces the sidelobe levels produced by the array. Thinning is accomplished by discretizing the aperture of the transducer array in two steps. First, a continuous aperture is discretized as a set of concentric rings. Then each ring is replaced by a set of spaced transducer elements. A zero sampling technique is used to determine the number of elements on each ring.