Evaluation of high-speed 3D imaging system which utilizes coded wavefront

We have developed a three dimensional (3D) imaging system which utilizes a combination of a sparse two dimensional (2D) array, the synthetic aperture focusing technique, and coded excitation of a solution for high speed 3D ultrasound imaging. A 2 MHz 40 x 40 array of PZT elements was fabricated with a conventional dice-and-fill process. A sparse 2D array was fabricated by choosing 64 transmitters and 128 receivers from 1600 elements of the array. A data acquisition system including 64-bit digital pattern generator, relay multiplexers, and a 32-channel analog-to-digital converter (ADC) was attached to the developed transducer array. Using this system, 3D images were successfully obtained for the standard ultrasound phantoms with 32 transmitters and 128 receivers. 3D images of a thick piece of pork were also obtained. Computer simulations and experiments were carried out to evaluate the imaging system quantitatively.