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Contrast agents, such as bubbles, are used in ultrasound to enhance backscatter from blood. To increase contrast between these agents and tissue, nonlinear methods such as harmonic imaging can be used. Contrast is limited, however, by tissue second harmonic signals. We show that a major source of this signal is nonlinear propagation through tissue. In addition, we present methods to suppress this second harmonic generation. One simple approach is to decrease the f/number of the imaging system. Simulations show that doubling the size of the array, while keeping total power output constant, decreases propagating second harmonic generation. A second approach uses active noise cancellation to suppress second harmonic generation. A specific method, the harmonic cancellation system (HCS), is developed and presented as an example. In simulations, HCS decreased second harmonic generation by over 30 dB. Using such methods, contrast can be improved between tissue and bubbles in harmonic imaging.

A new method for aberration correction is presented.Using multiple receive beams reconstructed at each transmit direction, image artifacts due to imperfect beam forming can be identified and greatly reduced. Previous studies have demonstrated the efficacy of such a compensation algorithm for blocked elements. In this study, the algorithm is extended for magnitude and phase aberrations. Experimental results show that substantial improvements are possible for small amplitude and phase errors. The compensation method is less effective for large errors, however. Based on this, a two-step procedure is proposed for general aberration correction. First, cross-correlation processing is used to reduce significant phase errors. Then, the adaptive compensation method is applied to remove remaining artifacts due to blocked elements, amplitude aberrations, and residual phase errors. This two-step procedure is shown to be effective in significantly reducing image artifacts due to amplitude and phase errors.

Previous studies have shown that the parallel adaptive receive compensation algorithm (PARCA) can improve clinical images of the abdomen degraded by aberrations. Corrected images show both improved contrast resolution and overall image quality. However, PARCA is very computationally intensive and, consequently, cannot be easily implemented in real-time. In this study, modifications to PARCA for possible real-time implementation are explored. A modified algorithm, PARCA2 (parallel adaptive receive compensation algorithm 2), is introduced to perform aberration correction much more efficiently. Results from tissue-mimicking phantoms and human images show that corrections with PARCA2 rival that of PARCA.

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