Adaptive multi-element synthetic aperture imaging with motion andphase aberration correction

摘要

Multi-element synthetic aperture techniques employing subaperturenprocessing over successive firing steps can produce good image qualitynwith simple front-end hardware but are susceptible to motion and phasenaberration artifacts. We explore correlation processing using fullyncommon spatial frequencies of overlapping subapertures to adaptnbeamforming for motion and phase aberrations. Signals derived from thensubset of elements representing common spatial frequencies exhibitnsignificantly higher correlation coefficients than those from signalsncomputed using the entire subaperture. In addition, the correlationncoefficient decreases linearly with subaperture separation for completensubaperture signals, but remains nearly constant with subaperturenseparation if only common spatial frequencies are used. Adaptivenmulti-element synthetic aperture imaging with correlation processingnusing fully common spatial frequencies is tested on experimental RF datanacquired from a diffuse scattering phantom using a 3.5 MHz, 128-elementntransducer array. The results indicate that common spatial frequenciesncan be used efficiently for correlation processing to correct motion andnphase aberration for adaptive multi-element synthetic aperture imaging