Simulation of high quality ultrasound imaging

Abstract

Abstract-This paper investigates if the influence on image quality using physical transducers can be simulated with an sufficient accuracy to reveal system performance. The influence is investigated in a comparative study between Synthetic Aperture Sequential Beamformation (SASB) and Dynamic Receive Focus ( Further, it is shown that SASB successfully maintains a constant LR though depth at FWHM, and is a factor of 2.3 better than DRF at 80 mm. However, when using SASB the LR at FWOHM is affected by non-ideal element responses. Introducing amplitude and phase compensation, the LR at FWOHM improves from 6.3 mm to 4.7 mm and is a factor of 2.2 better than DRF. This study has shown that individual element impulse response, phase, and amplitude deviations are important to include in simulated system performance evaluations. Furthermore, it is shown that SASB provides a constant LR through depth and has improved resolution and contrast compared to DRF.