title: Effects of Non-Elevation-Focalized Linear Array Transducer on Ultrasound Plane-Wave Imaging.
abstract: Plane-wave ultrasound imaging (PWUS) has become an important method of ultrasound imaging in recent years as its frame rate has exceeded 10,000 frames per second, allowing ultrasound to be used for two-dimensional shear wave detection and functional brain imaging. However, compared to the traditional focusing and scanning method, PWUS images always suffer from a degradation of lateral resolution and contrast. To improve the image quality of PWUS, many different beamforming algorithms have been proposed and verified. Yet the influence of transducer structure is rarely studied. For this paper, the influence of using an acoustic lens for PWUS was evaluated. Two linear array transducers were fabricated. One was not self-focalized in the elevation direction (non-elevation-focalized transducer, NEFT); the other one was a traditional elevation-focalized transducer (EFT). An initial simulation was conducted to show the influence of elevation focusing. Then the images obtained with NEFT on a standard ultrasound imaging phantom were compared with those obtained with EFT. It was demonstrated that, in a relatively deep region, the contrast of an NEFT image is better than that of an EFT image. These results indicate that a more sophisticated design of ultrasound transducer would further improve the image quality of PWUS.
authors.affiliation: Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, the Chinese Academy of Science, 1068 Xueyuan Avenue, Shenzhen University Town, Xili, Nanshan, Shenzhen 518055, China. cz.wang@siat.ac.cn.
authors.forename: Congzhi
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, the Chinese Academy of Science, 1068 Xueyuan Avenue, Shenzhen University Town, Xili, Nanshan, Shenzhen 518055, China. yang.xiao@siat.ac.cn.
authors.forename: Yang
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Xiao
authors.affiliation: Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, the Chinese Academy of Science, 1068 Xueyuan Avenue, Shenzhen University Town, Xili, Nanshan, Shenzhen 518055, China. jj.xia@siat.ac.cn.
authors.forename: Jingjing
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Xia
authors.affiliation: Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, the Chinese Academy of Science, 1068 Xueyuan Avenue, Shenzhen University Town, Xili, Nanshan, Shenzhen 518055, China. wb.qiu@siat.ac.cn.
authors.forename: Weibao
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Qiu
authors.affiliation: Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, the Chinese Academy of Science, 1068 Xueyuan Avenue, Shenzhen University Town, Xili, Nanshan, Shenzhen 518055, China. hr.zheng@siat.ac.cn.
authors.forename: Hairong
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zheng
keywords: acoustic lens; image contrast; non-elevation-focalized transducer; ultrafast ultrasound imaging