Ultrasound imaging using focusing beams for reducing mechanical index and thermal index

A method of beamforming ultrasound radio-frequency (RF) data acquired using focusing beams, comprising:

• acquiring focusing beam ultrasound data using an ultrasound transducer, the ultrasound transducer including a plurality of elements acting as both transmitters and receivers;
• taking an input data trace of the focusing beam ultrasound data at a certain receiver location;
• spraying a sample of the input data trace along an impulse response curve;
• computing image attributes;
• accumulating the image contributions;
• repeating the above four steps for all samples of all input data traces of all focusing beams at all receiver locations;
• performing coherent compounding to obtain a final image;
• and
• displaying the final image,
• wherein the ultrasound RF data are transmitted from the transmitters of the ultrasound transducer within a transmit aperture with transmitter time delays of focusing beams.

A system for acquiring and processing ultrasound radio-frequency (RF) data using focusing beams, comprising:

• an ultrasound transducer, the ultrasound transducer including a plurality of elements;
• a transmission and reception device;
• a display device;
• a keyboard;
• a pointing device;
• and
• a processing unit that contains a CPU (central processing unit) and a GPU (graphic processing unit),
• wherein the CPU and the GPU are adapted to:
• acquire, via the ultrasound transducer and the transmission and reception device, raw RF data using focusing beams;
• process and send the raw RF data to CPU memories or GPU memories;
• beamform the raw RF data on the CPU, the GPU, or both to obtain an ultrasound image;
• process and send the ultrasound image to the display device;
• display, via the display device, the ultrasound image;
• and
• repeat the above steps for a next frame.