Year: 2023
Type: article
Abstract: Deep abdominal images suffer from poor diffraction-limited lateral resolution. Extending the aperture size can improve resolution. However, phase distortion and clutter can limit the benefits of larger arrays. Previous studies have explored these effects using numerical simulations, multiple transducers, and mechanically swept arrays. In this work, we used an 8.8-cm linear array transducer to investigate the effects of aperture size when imaging through the abdominal wall. We acquired channel data in fundamental and harmonic modes using five aperture sizes. To avoid motion and increase the parameter sampling, we decoded the full-synthetic aperture data and retrospectively synthesized nine apertures (2.9-8.8 cm). We imaged a wire target and a phantom through ex vivo porcine abdominal samples and scanned the livers of 13 healthy subjects. We applied bulk sound speed correction to the wire target data. Although point resolution improved from 2.12 to 0.74 mm at 10.5 cm depth, contrast resolution often degraded with aperture size. In subjects, larger apertures resulted in an average maximum contrast degradation of 5.5 dB at 9-11 cm depth. However, larger apertures often led to visual detection of vascular targets unseen with conventional apertures. An average 3.7-dB contrast improvement over fundamental mode in subjects showed that the known benefits of tissue-harmonic imaging extend to larger arrays.
Language: English
Subfield: Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Imaging
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
Awards: Large aperture and wideband modular ultrasound arrays for the diagnosis of liver cancer, Insonation of ultrasound microbubbles at low frequency to enhance image-guided therapy, High Resolution Ultrasound in Interventional Radiology, Coherence-Based Fetal Ultrasonic Imaging, Quantitative volumetric ultrasonic and photoacoustic tomography
OpenAlex ID: W4323896855