Fundamental study on subharmonic imaging by irradiation of amplitude-modulated ultrasound waves

The second harmonic and subharmonic components, the frequencies of which are twice and one half the fundamental frequency, are included in echoes from contrast agents. An imaging method, which employs a second harmonic (second harmonic imaging), is widely used in medical diagnoses. On the other hand, subharmonic is expected to provide a higher contrast between biological tissues and blood flow because echo signals are generated only from blood containing the contrast agents. However, the subharmonic component echo signal power from contrast agents is relatively low. This has resulted in little progress in the field of subharmonic imaging. In this study, a new imaging method is proposed using amplitude-modulated waves as transmitted waves combined with the pulse inversion method to enhance subharmonic echo signals. Two optimal frequencies are set, including the modulated waves, F(1) and F(2), so that the subharmonic frequency of F(1) and the second harmonic frequency of F(2) may result in the same value. This allows a more powerful signal at the frequency band because the second harmonic and subharmonic components are integrated. Furthermore, a B-mode ultrasound image of an agar phantom that imitated biological tissue and showed the effectiveness of our method was reconstructed. As a result, the echo power of the subharmonic component was enhanced by approximately 11.8 dB more than the conventional method and the signal to noise ratio showed an improvement of 7.6 dB.