High resolution ultrasound beamforming using synthetic and adaptive imaging techniques

Ultrasound image quality can be improved by incorporating elevation information from high-order arrays and adjust the beamforming techniques to take advantage of the added information. We present the use of 1.75D ultrasound arrays for improving image quality with two approaches: 1) increasing the depth-of-field through synthetic transmit and receive imaging in elevation, and 2) implementing adaptive imaging techniques to remove tissue phase-aberrations to improve contrast and detail resolution. Phantom data is presented to show the increased visualization with synthetic elevation beamforming. Phantom and clinical results show the advantages of measuring and correcting images from two-dimensional phase aberration profiles using our 8 × 128 1.75D array.