Transmit beams adapted to reverberation noise suppression using dual-frequency SURF imaging

A method that uses dual-frequency pulse complexes of widely separated frequency bands to suppress noise caused by multiple scattering or multiple reflections in medical ultrasound imaging is presented. The excitation pulse complexes are transmitted to generate a second order ultrasound field (SURF) imaging synthetic transmit beam. This beam has reduced amplitude near the transducer, which illustrates the multiple scattering suppression ability of the imaging method. Field simulations solving a nonlinear wave equation are used to calculate SURF imaging beams, which are compared with beams for pulse inversion (PI) and fundamental imaging. In addition, a combined SURF and PI beam generation is described and compared with the beams mentioned above. A quality ratio, relating the energy within the near-field to that within the imaging region, is defined and used to score the multiple scattering and multiple reflection suppression abilities when imaging with the different beams. The realized combined SURF-PI beam scores highest, followed by SURF, PI (that score equally well), and the fundamental. The amplitude in the imaging region and therefore also the SNR is highest for the fundamental followed by SURF, PI, and SURF-PI. The work hence indicates that when substituting PI for SURF, one may trade increased SNR into use of increased imaging frequencies without loss of multiple scattering and multiple reflection noise suppression.