High-resolution ultrasound displacement measurement using coded excitations

Resolution of displacement measurements based on ultrasound pulse-echo techniques is limited by the center frequency of the transmitted wave, echo sampling rate, quantization errors, and electronic noises in the measurement system. We developed a new method utilizing the clutter signal in coded excitations to determine the displacement of an object or a desired region of an object with much improved resolution. The method includes transmitting a pair of Golay complementary sequences, receiving echoes from the object or a region of the object, compressing the pulse, eliminating the main lobe, and determining the object displacement between the two transmissions from the residual clutter signal around the main lobe of the compressed pulse. Results of computer simulations showed that the new method improved the resolution by several orders of magnitude and was more robust to noise than traditional pulse-echo methods. The new method was also evaluated using an experimental ultrasound system (10 MHz center frequency, 100 MHz sampling rate, and 8-bit sampling precision). A high precision in the displacement measurement was achieved with a measurement error of -5.76 nm ±36.27 nm (mean ± standard deviation). The method has the potential to be applied in biomedical and industrial measurements of distance, displacement, and thickness.

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