Sparse synthetic aperture ultrasound methods and systems

A method for producing a synthetic aperture ultrasound (SAU) system for ultrasound imaging, comprising:

• providing a first acoustic transducer array topology comprising a two-dimensional arrangement of a plurality of micromachined ultrasonic transducer elements of the SAU system;
• processing information about the first acoustic transducer array topology including (i) an objective space comprising a sampled three-dimensional volume adjacent to and non-overlapping with a space occupied by the first acoustic transducer array topology, (ii) an objective function characterizing an imaging capability of the SAU system, and (iii) one or more constraints on at least one physical characteristic of the plurality of elements;
• generating an acoustic field over the objective space for each element of the plurality of elements according to the first acoustic transducer array topology;
• evaluating the objective function in the objective space with respect to the one or more constraints using an optimization algorithm to determine optimized element locations of the plurality of elements of the SAU system;
• and
• creating a plurality of sparse acoustic transducer array topologies by selecting different subsets of elements from the plurality of elements that correspond to the determined optimized element locations, wherein each sparse acoustic transducer array topology of the plurality of sparse acoustic transducer array topologies comprises a corresponding plurality of transmit apertures and a corresponding plurality of receive apertures.