CONTRALATERAL ARRAY BASED CORRECTION OF TRANSCRANIAL ULTRASOUND ABERRATION

摘要

Ultrasound aberration, especially in transcranial imaging or therapy, is corrected by capturing the laterally two-dimensional nature of the aberration in the ultrasound being received, as by means of a two-dimensional receiving transducer array (104, 108). In some embodiments, transmissive ultrasound (164) is applied through the temporal window and is, for example, emitted from one or more real or virtual point sources (160) at a time, each point source being a single transducer element or patch or the geometrical focus of a collection of elements or patches. A patch may serve, in one aspect as a small focused transducer in the near field. A contralateral array (104, 108) is, in one version, comprised of the point sources. In some aspects, aberration maps structured, independent-variable-wise, to correspond to the array structure of the receiving transducer embody aberration estimates, the ultrasound device being configured for improving ultrasound operation by modifying device settings to improve the location of ultrasound reception/transmission or correct beamforming. Enhancements include beam placement visualization, and intensity and beam shape prediction.