Improved resolution backscatter coefficient imaging

This paper reports the extension of a method for imaging acoustic backscatter coefficients that allows for greater spatial resolution in the resulting images. This is done by using a broad-band excitation pulse and short-duration time gates in the analysis. The images produced had better spatial resolution than the previously reported technique [Ultrasonic Imaging 10, 121-138]. Furthermore, the pixel values were based upon quantitatively accurate backscatter coefficients at given spatial locations. The paper also discusses the additional computational requirements of greater spatial resolution and proposes a least-squares fit to a smoothly varying set of sparse data to generate the data points in between.