HIGH QUALITY HIGH FRAME RATE ULTRASOUND IMAGING WITH DIVERGING TRANSMIT BEAMS

摘要

An ultrasound system produces high quality images at a high framerate of display. A plane or volume to be imaged is scanned by different diverging transmit beams to acquire a series of different sub-frames, the number of sub-frame acquisitions comprising a total number of transmit beams which would produce a high quality image. The echoes received in response to the transmit beams of a sub-frame are coherently combined with the echoes received in other sub-frames. Each time the echoes of a new sub-frame have been coherently combined with the echoes of all other different sub-frames, a full image is produced. After a complete series of sub-frames has been received and the echoes combined, another series of sub-frame acquisition is commenced and a new series of sub-frames acquired. As each new sub-frame is acquired, it is coherently combined with all the other different and most recently acquired sub-frames. This technique produces a new image at the sub-frame scanning rate, rather than awaiting a completely new series of sub-frames before forming a new image.