3D strain imaging using a rectilinear 2D array.
Under mechanical compression, tissue movements are inherently three-dimensional. 2-D strain imaging can suffer from decorrelation noise caused by out-of-plane tissue movement in elevation. With 3-D strain imaging, all tissue movements can be estimated and compensated, hence minimizing out-of-plane decorrelation noise. Promising 3-D strain imaging results have been shown using 1-D arrays with mechanical translation in elevation. However, the relatively large slice thickness and mechanical translation can degrade image quality. Using 2-D arrays, an improved elevational resolution can be achieved with electronic focusing. Furthermore, scanning with 2-D arrays is also done electronically, which eliminates the need for mechanical translation. In this paper, we demonstrate the feasibility of 3-D strain imaging using a 4 cm x 4 cm ultrasonic sparse rectilinear 2-D array operating at 5MHz. The signal processing combinations of 2-D or 3-D beamforming followed by 2-D or 3-D strain imaging are studied and compared to each other to evaluate the performance of our 3-D strain imaging system. 3-D beamforming followed by 3-D strain imaging showed best performance in all experiments.
Awad
Samer I
SI
USC Viterbi School of Engineering, University Park, Los Angeles, CA 90089-1111, USA. sawad@usc.edu
Yen
Jesse T
JT
D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional; D019047:Phantoms, Imaging; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; D014463:Ultrasonography / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*