CHAPTER 3

BEAMFORMATION IN ULTRASOUND IMAGING

 In medical ultrasound, beamforming is used to focus the echo signals received
as reflections from different tissue structures in the region of interest. On the transmit
side, focused beams of ultrasound are created using a phased array, and the receive
beamformer creates a pattern of beams pointing in the same direction. In the receive
beamformer, focusing is achieved by appropriately delaying echo signals arriving at
different elements to align them in a way that creates an isophase plane. These aligned
echoes are then all summed coherently. This provides processing gain. This basic
signal processing is called delay-and-weighting function in the time domain. 

However, ultrasound systems must capture both close-in reflections in the near-
field (e.g., for vascular scans), as well as reflections in the far-field (for abdominal or
cardiac sectors). The challenge for ultrasound beamforming systems is dynamically
changing the delays for each of the transducer elements to move the focal point from
the near-field to the far-field during the scan line. Transducer arrays perform sampling in
the spatial domain. As with any sampled data system, steps must be taken to control
aliasing effects. Just as time-domain sampling uses an antialiasing filter, spatial
sampling employs a window function for weighting the transducer elements based on
their position in the aperture. The process is called apodization. As the focal point
moves from the near-field to the far-field, the window function must be continuously
scaled to the effective size of the aperture. This process is called dynamic apodization.

The ultrasound receive beamformer can be used to steer the beam by controlling
the delay of each element. In addition, by controlling channel to channel delay
differences, dynamic focusing can be implemented on the receive beamformer side.
These delay differences compensate for propagation delay differences between the
focal point and the various elements of the array based on the array geometry.
Assuming spherical reflected waves, these delay differences are bigger from targets in
the nearfield where the wavefront arriving at the array is more curved, and smaller from
those in the farfield where the arriving wavefront is more flat. With dynamic focusing,
 these focusing delays (added to the steering delays) are not fixed, but rather are a
function of time corresponding to the depth or range from which the echoes are being
received during the scan-line. Unlike multiple transmit foci, this dynamic focusing on the
receive beamformer does not affect frame rates.

Transducer Types
1. Linear array
2. Phased array
3. Convex array

Linear array

The piezoelectric crystal arrangement is linear, the shape of the beam is rectangular,
and the near field resolution is good.

The footprint, frequency, and applications of the linear transducer depend on whether
the product is for 2d or 3d imaging. The linear transducer for 2d imaging has a wide
footprint and its central frequency is 2.5MHz – 12MHz.  This transducer for various
applications, such as

 Vascular examination
 Venipuncture, blood vessel visualization
 Breast
 Thyroid
 Phased array
Phased Array transducer has a small footprint and low frequency (its central frequency
is 2Mhz – 7.5Mhz).

The beam point is narrow but it expands depending on the applied frequency. The
beam shape is almost triangular and the near field resolution is poor. This transducer for
various applications, such as
 Cardiac examinations, including Transesophageal examinations
 Abdominal examinations
 Brain examinations

Convex array
The convex ultrasound transducer type is also called the curved transducer because the
piezoelectric crystal arrangement is curvilinear.

Moreover, the beam shape is convex and the transducer is good for in depth
examinations, even though the image resolution decreases when the depth increases.
 The convex transducer for 2D imaging has a wide footprint and its central frequency is
2.5MHz – 7.5MHz.It can be used for:
 Abdominal examinations
 Transvaginal and transrectal examinations
 Diagnosis of organs

Types of beamforming techniques

 Transmit beamforming
 Receive beamforming

Transmit beamforming
In transmit beamforming appropriate delays and possible apodization are applied
to the individual transducer elements to obtain a single focal point.

Receive beamforming
In receive beamforming appropriate delays are applied to the received signals
and then a weighted sum is perfromed
Beamforming Techniques
• Parallel beamforming

• Synthetic aperture

• Spatial compounding

• Adaptive beamforming

SYNTHETIC APERTURE BEAMFORMING

The problems with medical ultrasound include low imaging depth and that high
resolution is achieved only where the transducer is focused. Another problem is the
decreasing of SNR with depth. The basic idea with synthetic aperture is to combine
information from emissions close to each other. The idea behind this was to transmit an
unfocused wave from one element and only use dynamic focusing when receiving for all
points the wave passed. This is a contrast to the conventional beamforming, were only
imaging along one line in receiving is used. This means that every image line is imaged
as many times as the number of elements used. This will create an equal amount of low
resolution images which are summed up to create one high resolution image. One of
the important processes in ultrasound imaging systems is the beamforming. There are
many different beamforming methods. In the proposed work the STA method is used,
where at each time one array element transmits a pulse and all elements receive the
echo signals. Here data are acquired simultaneously from all directions over a number
of emissions, and the full image can be reconstructed from this data (Fig. 1). The
advantage of this approach is that a full dynamic focusing can be applied to the
transmission and the receiving giving the highest quality of image. In the STA method
focusing is performed by finding the geometric distance from the transmitting element to
the imaging point and back to the receiving element. The structure of the synthetic
aperture and geometric relation between the transmit and receive element combination
is shown in fig 2
 When a short pulse is transmitted by the element m and the echo signal is
received by the element n, as shown in Fig. 2, the round-trip delay is
τ m ,n = τ m+ τ n,
where (m, n) is a transmit and receive element combination, 0 ≤ m, n ≤ N − 1.
The delays for the m-th element and n-th element are
1
τ m= p∗2 m+r∗2−2∗x m rsin ϴ
c
1
τ n= p∗2 n+r∗2−2∗x n rsin ϴ
c
where x m, x n are the positions of the m-th and n-th elements, respectively, and r is the
distance between the synthetic aperture centre and the point (r, θ).
For the STA method, the axial image resolution is clearly better than the standard
beamforming method focused at one single depth.
The images reconstructed from the STA system gives a better image resolution
than those of the conventional ultrasound system maintaining the frame rate high. The
disadvantage of the STA system is that the storage and processing requirements are
higher than in the conventional beamforming, because the RF data must be stored for
every combination of transmit and receive elements, and later recombined. The
synthetic aperture method can be applied in a standard ultrasound scanner. Introduction
of the STA method in medical ultrasound increases the effectiveness and quality of the
ultrasound diagnostic.