Systems and methods for grating lobe reduction in ultrasound imaging
AssigneeKoninklijke Philips N.V.
InventorsFaik Can Meral, Jean-Luc Francois-Marie Robert, Francois Guy Gerard Marie Vignon, Jun Seob Shin, Iason Zacharias Apostolakis, Seyedali Sadeghi
Life of this patent
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Abstract
In some examples, received signals from certain multilines may be selectively filtered to remove aliased frequencies that may result in grating lobes in ultrasound images. In some examples, a transmit beam may be shaped to reduce spatial frequencies in received signals. In some examples, the width of the transmit beam may be adjusted based on a frequency of the transmit signal. In some examples, a focal depth of the transmit beam may be adjusted based on a frequency of the transmit signal.
Claims21
An ultrasound imaging system comprising:
- a transducer array configured for transmitting ultrasound signals, receiving echoes responsive to the ultrasound signals, and providing receive signals corresponding to the echoes for a plurality of multilines;
- and
- a processor configured to:
- determine a target steering angle for the transducer array, wherein the target steering angle is based, at least in part, on a pitch of the transducer array and a frequency of the ultrasound signals;
- determine a steering angle for individual ones of the plurality of multilines, wherein the steering angle is based, at least in part, on the pitch of the transducer array;
- and
- filter the receive signals corresponding to one or more of the plurality of multilines that have steering angles greater than the target steering angle before processing the receive signals into ultrasound image data.
A method, comprising:
- transmitting an ultrasound signal with a transducer array;
- receiving echoes responsive to the ultrasound signal at the transducer array;
- generating receive signals for a plurality of multilines with the transducer array;
- determining a target steering angle based, at least in part, on a frequency of the ultrasound signal and a pitch of the transducer array;
- determining a steering angle for individual ones of the plurality of multilines;
- and
- filtering the receive signals corresponding to one or more of the plurality of multilines that have steering angles greater than the target steering angle before processing the receive signals into ultrasound image data.
An ultrasound imaging system comprising:
- a transducer array configured for transmitting a transmit beam comprising ultrasound signals, receiving echoes responsive to the ultrasound signals, and providing receive signals corresponding to the echoes for a plurality of multilines;
- and
- a controller configured to provide control signals to the transducer array to cause the transducer array to transmit the ultrasound signals such that a width of the transmit beam is adjusted based on frequencies of the ultrasound signals, wherein the width of the transmit beam is wider for low frequencies and narrower for high frequencies.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.