Sparse array techniques for 2D array ultrasound imaging

Bakary Diarra , Hervé Liebgott , Piero Tortoli (1) , Christian Cachard (2)

1 Electronics and Telecommunications Department
2 Imagerie Ultrasonore

Ultrasound imaging is one of the cheapest and safest diagnostic modalities which are routinely used. An attractive recent development in this field is 3D imaging with 2D matrix probes. The main difficulty to implement this approach comes from the huge number of elements which need to be controlled. To solve this technical problem several methods are proposed in the literature, such as edge elements deactivation, sparse array and row-column addressing. The sparse array technique presents the best trade-off between the element number and the probe imaging features. However, this technique gives rise to the apparition of high side-lobes compared to the dense array approach. To reduce this drawback we propose a new approach in which the probe elements are randomly placed and separated by a random inter-element distance, and any overlap between them is not accepted. This approach permits a better use of the element sparseness and lowers the side-lobe level. The proposed technique was tested on a 64x16 2D array probe designed for biopsy imaging. Results obtained in terms of acoustical beam characteristics will be presented and shown to favorably compare with the results offered by the classic sparse array method for the same number of connected elements.

Mots clés: 2D array; Sparse array

Domaines: Acoustique [physics.class-ph]

Bakary Diarra, Hervé Liebgott, Piero Tortoli, Christian Cachard. Sparse array techniques for 2D array ultrasound imaging. Acoustics 2012, Apr 2012, Nantes, France. ⟨hal-00810649⟩