New performance metrics for ultrasound pulse compression systems

In medical ultrasound, B-mode images are log-compressed and displayed with a grayscale map, typically on a 40-60 dB dynamic range. The image formation process is the same for an ultrasound pulse compression system using coded excitation. Metrics, such as full width at half maximum (FWHM), peak sidelobe level (PSL) and integrated sidelobe level (ISL), used to evaluate pulse compression systems were adopted from radar and communications. These metrics are utilized to evaluate the performance of an auto-correlation function, which is the ideal case. In medical ultrasound imaging however, the combination of frequency and depth dependent attenuation, dispersion, harmonic generation, beamforming errors, and limited transducer bandwidth create a more complicated case for a pulse compressed system that is far from the ideal.