Three-dimensional (3D) and/or four-dimensional (4D) ultrasound imaging

An ultrasound imaging system, comprising:

• at least two 1D arrays of transducer elements, including a first array of transducer elements and a second array of transducer elements angularly offset from each other in a same plane, wherein the at least two 1D arrays of transducer elements are not included in a 2D matrix transducer;
• transmit circuitry that excites the first and second arrays of transducer elements to concurrently transmit beams at each of a plurality of different angles;
• receive circuitry that controls the first and second arrays of transducer elements to concurrently receive echo signals at each of the plurality of different angles;
• an echo processor that beamforms the received signals from the first and second arrays to produce a first data stream for the first array and a second data stream for the second array, wherein the first and second data streams include digitized representations of the received echo signals and a number of samples in a data stream depends on a length of a receive period and on a sample frequency, and the echo processor further detects, by way of envelope detection, amplitudes of the samples in the first and second data streams;
• a sample matcher that compares the detected amplitudes of the samples of the first and second data streams and determines a cross-correlation value between each pair of compared detected sample amplitudes;
• a correlation factor generator that generates a correlation factor signal based on the determined cross-correlation values, wherein the correlation factor signal includes a sequence of the cross-correlation values describing how equal the samples in the signals are as a function of time during reception;
• and
• a scan converter that generates a 3D image based on the first and second data streams and determines a gray-scale for the 3D image by multiplying the cross-correlation values of the correlation factor signal by averages of the amplitudes of samples of the first and second data streams.