Compound Barker-Coded Excitation for Increased Signal-to-Noise Ratio and Penetration Depth in Transcranial Ultrasound Imaging

摘要

Clinical translation of transcranial ultrasound imaging has been unsuccessful due to poor image quality. One cause is insufficient signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) due to poor acoustic penetration through the skull. Coded excitation can be used to increase SNR within FDA safety limits and without contrast agents. This work encompasses a method to design long binary coded pulses along with a pulse compression technique to completely suppress range lobes, thereby recovering axial resolution and improving SNR by as much as a factor of 10log10(code length). This optimized coded excitation framework was shown to be effective in transcranial imaging of five healthy adult subjects.