Sparse Rectangular and Spiral Array Designs for 3D Medical Ultrasound Imaging

Abstract

In three-dimensional (3D) medical ultrasound imaging with two-dimensional (2D) arrays, sparse 2D arrays have been studied to reduce the number of active channels. Among them, sparse 2D arrays with regular or uniform arrangements of elements have advantages of low side lobe energy and uniform field responses over the entire field of view. This paper presents two uniform sparse array models: sparse rectangular arrays (SRAs) on a rectangular grid and sparse spiral arrays (SSAs) on a sunflower grid. Both arrays can be easily implemented on the commercially available or the custom-made arrays. To suppress the overall grating lobe levels, the transmit (Tx) and receive (Rx) array pairs of both the array models are designed not to have grating lobes at the same locations in the Tx/Rx beam patterns, for which the theoretical design rules are also proposed. Computer simulation results indicate that the proposed array pairs for both the SRAs and the SSAs achieve peak grating lobe levels below –40 dB using about a quarter of the number of elements in the dense rectangular array while maintaining similar beam widths to that of the dense array pair.

Current Development and Applications of Super-Resolution Ultrasound Imaging

“…In addition to these approaches, the sparse array [ 98 ]-based volumetric super-resolution ultrasound imaging technique utilizes half of the channels compared to the fully sampled array and achieves a comparable resolution [ 104 ]. Further research on sparse array-based super-resolution ultrasound imaging should continue to deal with the grating lobe [ 99 ] and the fastidious optimization process [ 104 ] of the sparse array [ 105 ]. The other approach, the row–column array-based super-resolution imaging method [ 99 ], reduces the number of connections from N 2 to 2N in the N N 2D array by utilizing two orthogonal arrays [ 104 ].…”

Design of 2D Planar Sparse Binned Arrays Based on the Coarray Analysis

“…Based on these observations, it seems reasonable to propose solutions for sparse arrays based on the completeness of the coarray, and several works have addressed this objective in two different ways: searching two complementary apertures, one in emission and the other in reception, that generate this completeness [ 16 , 28 ]; alternatively, based on synthetic aperture, using different configurations in emission/reception to complete the coarray [ 30 ].…”

“…Mainly, optimization-based sparse array design strategies employ fitness functions (FF) based on the analysis of beampattern characteristics, such as mainlobe width and sidelobe level. Due to the high computational cost associated with the beampattern simulation and the complexity of its analysis [ 14 , 15 ], the use of these FFs turn the bidimensional sparse array design into a complex process [ 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 ].…”

Design of 2D Sparse Array Transducers for Anomaly Detection in Medical Phantoms

“…Typically, a 1–3 connectivity piezoelectric composite configuration would be used as the active material for operation into a low acoustic impedance load media, such as tissue [ 14 ]. However, the aperiodic sparse array configuration of interest does not align well with the regular pillar arrangement within a standard 1–3 material.…”