Beam steering and coordinate system rotation improves accuracy of ultrasonic measurements of tissue displacement vector and lateral displacement

Abstract:

With the proper use of beam steering and apodization, a higher resolution lateral echo image is obtained than with conventional imaging. This is achieved by superimposing crossed, steered beams, which is referred to as “lateral modulation” (LM). This type of beamforming achieves almost the same accuracy in lateral displacement measurements as in axial displacement measurements, ie, displacement vector measurements. The steering angle (ASTA) can also be used instead of LM, which uses only beams with a steering angle. In this report, the accuracy of the displacement vectors and lateral displacement measurements for LM and ASTA were evaluated using simulations and agar phantom experiments. The parameters used were direction of a displacement vector, steering angles, and rotation angle for the coordinate system. Changes in the steering angle and rotation angle of the coordinate system permit control of frequencies in the respective directions of the coordinate axes. As shown, when performing a simple ASTA for displacement vector measurement, a spectra frequency division should be performed using a previously developed multidimensional autocorrelation or Doppler method instead of block-matching methods. In this version of ASTA, the combination of nonsteering and rotation of the coordinate system is also effective, because the lateral bandwidth does not decrease. In such a case, transmission of a laterally wide wave will also be effective, particularly for three-dimensional measurement/imaging using a two-dimensional array transducer. ASTA can also be used for accurate lateral displacement measurements. Although a proper beam steering and/or a proper coordinate rotation improves the measurement accuracy achieved with LM and ASTA, all measurement accuracies obtained with ASTA are lower than with LM.

Keywords::

• lateral modulation
• single steering angle
• coordinate system rotation
• spectra frequency division

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