Aberration correction on a two-dimensional anisotropic phased array [medical US imaging]

Aberration correction methods for 1-D arrays have been extended for 2-D arrays. Particular emphasis has been placed on aberration correction for 2-D anisotropic arrays, where local phase errors are estimated using correlation processing of signals from unequally sized elements. Unwrapping of these local estimates over the 2-D array also has been investigated. A very practical method for 2-D aberration correction appropriate for pipelined beam forming has been developed. Simulation results demonstrate that the method yields accurate 2-D phase corrections over an anisotropic array. Moreover, these results show that the accuracy of the phase estimates is relatively immune both to the specific two-dimensional unwrap path and the presence of inoperable elements