Ultrasonic Large Aperture Imaging System

ABSTRACT A new ultrasonic large aperture imaging technique is described. This device combines a focussed transducer as a transmitter, producing a small ultrasonic beam, with N transducers as receivers. We show that it's possible to considerably reduce the number of receivers if, on the one hand, we limit the reconstitution process to the emitter beam area and, on the other hand, we ensure that the artefacts, caused by the spatial sampling of the reception, are outside this area. Under these conditions, the result is a high resolution image which does not require large reconstitution processing times. Theoretical and experimental results are given.