The Impact of Acoustic Clutter on Large Array Abdominal Imaging

Area of Science:

• Medical Imaging
• Acoustics
• Biomedical Engineering

Background:

• Abdominal imaging faces acoustic challenges due to deep targets and heterogeneous tissue properties causing clutter.
• Previous research on large arrays was limited by experimental constraints (6.4 cm length, partial element sampling).

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the impact of increasing array size on diagnostic imaging quality in simulated abdominal environments.
• To evaluate the effectiveness of larger matrix arrays in overcoming acoustic clutter and improving resolution.

Main Methods:

• Utilized the Fullwave simulation tool to model a 10 cm ×2 cm matrix array with full lateral element sampling.
• Employed a numerical abdominal model incorporating tissue acoustical properties to simulate wave propagation.
• Analyzed aberration and reverberation clutter, contrast, contrast-to-noise ratio, and target resolution.

Main Results:

• Simulated abdominal propagation generated significant aberration (25.4 ns) and clutter (0.74 cm).
• Increasing array aperture from 2 cm to 10 cm improved contrast by 8.6 dB and contrast-to-noise ratio by 22.9%.
• Larger aperture sizes also led to substantial improvements in target resolution.

Conclusions:

• Larger diagnostic imaging arrays are crucial for high-resolution ultrasound in challenging abdominal environments.
• The findings support the development of advanced, larger-aperture arrays for improved in vivo imaging.
• Alternative strategies like mismatched or swept synthetic apertures also benefit from increased aperture size.