Systems and methods for synthetic aperture ultrasound tomography

Abstract

Synthetic-aperture ultrasound tomography systems and methods using scanning arrays and algorithms configured to simultaneously acquire ultrasound transmission and reflection data, and process the data for improved ultrasound tomography imaging.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS[0001]This application is a 35 U.S.C. §111(a) continuation of PCT international application number PCT / US2013 / 024539 filed on Feb. 3, 2013, incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, which claims priority to, and the benefit of, U.S. provisional patent application Ser. No. 61 / 594,865, filed on Feb. 3, 2012, incorporated herein by reference in its entirety. Priority is claimed to each of the foregoing applications.[0002]The above-referenced PCT international application was published as PCT International Publication No. WO 2013 / 116807 on Aug. 8, 2013, incorporated herein by reference in it entirety.STATEMENT REGARDING FEDERALLY SPONSORED RESEARCH OR DEVELOPMENT[0003]This invention was made with Government support under Contract No. DE-AC52-06NA25396 awarded by the Department of Energy. The Government has certain rights in the invention.INCORPORATION-BY-REFERENCE OF COMPUTER PROGRAM APPENDIX[0004]Not ApplicableNOTICE OF MATERIAL SUBJECT TO...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0014]The system and method of the present invention uses ultrasound data acquired using a synthetic-aperture ultrasound system. The investigational synthetic-aperture ultrasound tomography system of the present invention allows acquisition of each tomographic slice of patient ultrasound data in real time. In the system, each element of the transducer array transmits ultrasound sequentially, and elements in the transducer array simultaneously record ultrasound signals scattered from the tissue after each element is fired. The features of the system and method of the present invention provide a real-time synthetic-aperture system that can be used for patient data acquisition.

[0015]In the synthetic-aperture ultrasound tomography system of the present invention, ultrasound from each element of a transducer array or a virtual source of multiple elements propagates to the entire imaging domain, and all elements in the transducer array receive ultrasound signals reflected / scattered from the imaging region and / or transmitted / scattered through the imaging region. Therefore, the acquired synthetic-aperture ultrasound data contain information of ultrasound reflected / scattered and transmitted from all possible directions from the imaging domain to the transducer array to generate a more accurate, 3-D, high resolution image, while minimizing computational costs of the system.

Problems solved by technology

Ultrasound waveform tomography is gaining popularity, but is computationally expensive, even for today's fastest computers.

The computational cost increases linearly with the number of transmitting sources.

Accordingly, these systems suffer from extensive computational costs, insufficient resolution, or both.

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