NEW ULTRASOUND IMAGING TECHNIQUES WITH PHASE COHERENCE PROCESSING

This work addresses three key subjects to the image quality with phased arrays: timing accuracy, beamforming strategy and post-processing for increased resolution and suppression of grating and side lobes.

Timing accuracy is achieved by defining a modular and scalable architecture which guarantees low timing errors, whatever is the system size. The proposed beamforming methodology follows the progressive focusing correction technique, which keeps low focusing errors, provides a high information density and has a simple implementation for real-time imaging in modular architectures. Then, phase coherence imaging is defined to suppress grating and sidelobe indications, simultaneously increasing the lateral resolution.