DocumentCode :
3232269
Title :
Multi-transmit beam forming for fast cardiac imaging
Author :
Ling Tong ; Hang Gao ; Hon Fai Choi ; D´hooge, J.
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Cardiovascular Diseases, Catholic Univ. of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
fYear :
2011
fDate :
18-21 Oct. 2011
Firstpage :
140
Lastpage :
143
Abstract :
A very high temporal resolution is critical to reach a better understanding of short-lived cardiac phases which have potential diagnostic value. To increase the frame rate, as an alternative to parallel receive beam forming, it has been proposed to transmit multiple lines simultaneously (i.e. multi-line transmit (MLT)) although this approach has received less attention due to potential cross-talk artifacts between beams. In this study, the point spread function (PSF) of different number of MLT beams (i.e. 2, 4, 6) was compared to that of conventional beam forming by computer simulation in order to find optimal settings to develop an MLT system for fast cardiac imaging. To reduce the cross-talk artifacts, different combinations of transmit and receive apodizations were tested using windowing functions: Rectangular, Hanning, Tukey and Hamming. Results showed that the cross-talk became more severe as the number of the MLT beams increased. Apodizations could significantly reduce these artifacts. In particular a Hanning-Tukey (α = 0.3) combination reduced these artifacts below the -40dB level for all MLT systems tested. With this apodization scheme, no marked differences between Single line transmit (SLT) and 6MLT phantom images could be observed. This study showed that the 6MLT imaging system has a competitive image quality to SLT but with a 6 times higher frame rate. In addition, the MLT approach can be combined with (multiple) parallel receive beam forming to increase frame rate further. With these methods, a frame rate of approximately up to 450Hz can be achieved to generate a 90° sector image without significant loss in image quality.
Keywords :
biomedical ultrasonics; cardiology; computerised instrumentation; image resolution; medical image processing; optical transfer function; phantoms; ultrasonic imaging; ultrasonic transducers; apodization scheme; competitive image quality; computer simulation; cross-talk artifacts; fast cardiac imaging; hamming windowing functions; hanning windowing functions; high temporal resolution; multitransmit beam forming; phantom images; point spread function; rectangular windowing functions; short-lived cardiac phases; tukey windowing functions; ultrasonic transducers; Acoustics; Dynamic range; Firing; Image quality; Imaging; Imaging phantoms; Ultrasonic imaging; beam forming; high frame rate; multi-line transmit;
fLanguage :
English
Publisher :
ieee
Conference_Titel :
Ultrasonics Symposium (IUS), 2011 IEEE International
Conference_Location :
Orlando, FL
ISSN :
1948-5719
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4577-1253-1
Type :
conf
DOI :
10.1109/ULTSYM.2011.0035
Filename :
6293527
Link To Document :
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