Multi-Element Synthetic Transmit Aperture Method in Medical Ultrasound Imaging

The paper presents the multi-element synthetic transmit aperture (MSTA) method with a small number of elements transmitting and all elements apertures in medical ultrasound imaging. As compared to the other methods MSTA allows to increase the system frame rate and provides the best compromise between penetration depth and lateral resolution. In the experiments a 128-element linear transducer array with 0.3 mm pitch excited by a burst pulse of 125 ns duration were used. The comparison of 2D ultrasound images of tissue mimicking phantom obtained using the STA and the MSTA methods is presented to demonstrate the benefits of the second approach. The results were obtained using SA algorithm with transmit and receive signals correction based on a single element directivity function.

Authors:

• Ihor Trots
• Yuriy Tasinkevych
• Andrzej Nowicki
• Marcin Lewandowski

Keywords:

• Beamforming
• frame rate
• synthetic aperture
• ultrasound imaging

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