Contrast and Volume Rate Enhancement of 3-D Ultrasound Imaging Using Aperiodic Plane Wave Angles: A Simulation Study

Three-dimensional plane wave imaging (PWI) with a 2-D array has been studied for ultrafast volumetric imaging in medical ultrasound. Compared to 2-D PWI, 3-D PWI requires the transmission of an increased number of plane waves (PWs) to scan a volume of interest and achieve transmit dynamic focusing in both the lateral and elevational directions. To reduce the number of PW angles for a given 2-D angular range by mitigating the grating lobe level, we propose two aperiodic patterns of PW angles: concentric rings with a uniform radial interval and the well-known sunflower pattern. Both patterns are validated to provide uniform angle distributions without regular periodicity, and thereby reduce the grating lobe level compared to a periodic angle distribution with the same number of PW angles. Simulation studies show that the aperiodic patterns enhance the contrast of B-mode images by approximately 3-6 dB over all depths. This enhancement implies that the aperiodic angle sets can increase the volume rate by approximately 2-6 times compared to the periodic angle set at the same contrast and spatial resolution.