Systems and Methods for Synthetic Aperture Focusing in Ultrasound Imaging

摘要

Systems and methods are provided for suppressing the side-lobe artifacts in ultrasound imaging with plane wave compounding. The use of discrete angles in transmitting plane waves may be used to suppress side-lobes and the resulting side-lobe artifacts without increasing the number of firings required. A method is provided that utilizes nulls in Rx beam pattern to suppress side-lobes based on the beam pattern formula. An apodization technique that uses window functions according to Tx angles and/or Rx aperture may also be used. A method using aperiodic sampling angles may also be used to suppress artifacts. Application to arbitrary interval sampling angles may be found. Suppressing artifacts according to the present disclosure may provide for wider field of view imaging without resorting to increasing the number of firings required (NFR).