Phase Aberration Correction Using Near-Field Signal Redundancy-Part I:

Phase aberration is one of the most impor- tant factors that limit improvement to lateral resolution of ultrasound imaging systems. Signal redundancy is the basic principle behind many algorithms developed for as- tronomical imaging to correct aberrations introduced by atmospheric turbulence. Although the signal redundancy principle has been discussed for phase-aberration measure- ment in ultrasound imaging systems, the near-field effect has not been analyzed adequately. Consequently, only mod- erate success has been achieved. In this paper, the signal redundancy principle in the near field is analyzed quanti- tatively. It is found that common midpoint signals are not identical (or redundant) for echoes coming from arbitrary target distributions in the near field. A dynamic near-field correction is proposed to reduce the difference between common midpoint signals for echoes coming from the re- gion of interest. When phase aberrations are present, it is shown that the dynamic correction can generally be done assuming no phase aberration, and the relative time-shift between common midpoint signals can be used to measure phase-aberration profiles. A phase-aberration correction al- gorithm based on that principle is proposed. In this algo- rithm, after common midpoint signals are collected they are dynamically corrected for near-field effects and cross- correlated with one another. In a related way, the phase errors are measured from peak positions of these cross- correlation functions. The phase-aberration profile across the array is derived from these measurements. The rela- tionship between the errors in the derived phase aberration profile and the errors in the measured relative time-shift be- tween common midpoint signals is derived. A method for treating the situation of different transmission and recep- tion phase-aberration profiles is also proposed. This algo- rithm works for general target distributions, iteration is not required, and it can be used in other near-field, pulse-echo,

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