Dynamic aperture control and normalization for apodization in beamforming

摘要

A method of apodizing for ultrasound beamforming includes providing filtered digital channel data representing echo data from target tissue in a plurality (k) of data channels and a predefined number of active channels (N_act). A software-based integrated apodization algorithm dynamically apodizes the digital channel data using a selected apodizing function h[n,k], n being the sample number. The integrated apodization algorithm applies dynamic aperture control to create an effective aperture by generating a parameter numApertureChannels (N_ap[n]), where N_ap[n]≦N_act, and selecting N_ap[n] particular data channels based on a dynamic beam focusing location for beamforming. Applied dynamic data scaling provides data normalization using a vector inner product between h[n,k] and a scale factor to generate normalized apodization factors h_norm [n,k]. The normalized apodization factors are applied to the digital channel data in the N_ap[n] particular data channels to generate apodized and normalized digital channel data.