A method to improve the lateral resolution of ultrasonic intravascular imaging

A catheter-based intravascular ultrasonic device can be used as a very effective instrument in medical diagnosis and therapy. Because the number of the connections between the array and the control unit is limited, classic phase array techniques can´t be applied to improve the image quality. So the synthetic aperture imaging technique can be used to solve this problem. The structure of the return wave of the imaging area and the theory of synthetic aperture imaging on a circular track are discussed, and the imaging procedures, such as the calculation of filter functions, the realization of pulse compression, are also included