Modulation of Receiving Beams for Suppression of Grating Lobe Artifacts in Ultrasound Images

摘要

[Background] In ultrasonic imaging using diverging transmit beams and steered receiving beams, aperture apodization and spatial combination of receiving beams from multiple transmissions are not sufficient to suppress receive grating lobe artifacts. [Principle] In this study, we proposed a technique of modulating the receiving beams by a factor that is governed by the envelope of a corresponding receiving beam, which was formed by filtering the receiving beam by a zero phase low pass filter with a cut-off frequency that is determined by the receive steering angle. [Results and Conclusion] Application of this technique to offline reconstruction of B-mode images from simulation, tube phantom and in vivo imaging of carotid artery shows significant suppression of receive grating lobe artifacts without loss in spatial resolution.