IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ULTRASONICS, FERROELECTRICS, AND FREQUENCY CONTROL, VOL. 42, NO.
3, MAY 1995 429
Synthetic Aperture Imaging for Small Scale Systems
Mustafa Karaman, Member, IEEE, Pai-Chi Li, and Matthew O’Donnell, Fellow, IEEE
Abstract— Multi-element synthetic aperture imaging methods
suitable for applications with severe cost and size limitations
are explored. Array apertures are synthesized using an active
multi-element receive subaperture and a multi-element trans-
mit subaperture defocused to emulate a single-element spatial
response with high acoustic power. Echo signals are recorded
independently by individual elements of the receive subaperture.
Each method uses different spatial frequencies and acquisition
strategies for imaging, and therefore different sets of active trans-
mit/receive element combinations. Following acquisition, image
points are reconstructed using the complete data set with full
dynamic focus on both transmit and receive. Various factors
affecting image quality have been evaluated and compared to
conventional imagers through measurements with a 3.5 MHz,
128-element transducer array on different gel phantoms. Multi-
element synthetic aperture methods achieve higher electronic
signal to noise ratio and better contrast resolution than conven-
tional synthetic aperture techniques, approaching conventional
phased array performance.
I. INTRODUCTION
A POWERFUL imaging system for real-time medical ap-
plications must be agile yet maintain good image quality
at low cost. Agility includes selectable scan formats, Doppler
and color flow processing, and advanced signal and image
processing packaged in a physical size consistent with a
highly mobile device. Image quality is primarily determined
by penetration (i.e., electronic signal to noise ratio) and both
spatial and contrast resolution. Finally, cost is a function of
system complexity and hence limits both image quality and
agility. Practical system design, therefore, always reduces to a
trade-off between image quality and system complexity.
The widespread availability of application specific inte-
grated circuits (ASIC’s) has changed phased array front-end
design [1]–[3]. Digital beam formers now permit high preci-
sion imaging with a very simple system architecture [4]–[8].
As these devices increase in complexity and decrease in cost,
higher channel count systems will be possible with the same
overall cost and agility as current commercial scanners. In
this paper we explore an alternate application of digital beam
forming: hand-held systems. The fundamental hypothesis of
Manuscript received August 22, 1994; revised November 4, 1994; accepted
November 16, 1994. This work was supported in part by Turkish Scientific
and Technical Research Council (TUBITAK), General Electric, Acuson, and
the National Institutes of Health under grant CA 54896.
M. Karaman is with the Bioengineering Program, University of Michigan,
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2122.
P.-C. Li is with Acuson Corporation, Moutain View, CA.
M. O’Donnell is with the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Department and Bioengineering Program, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor,
MI 48109-2122.
IEEE Log Number 9409917.
0885–3010/95$04.00  1995 IEEE
this work is that the same digital technology developed for
high channel count systems can be used to dramatically reduce
the size and cost of low channel count systems capable of
reasonable image quality.
Personal computer based and pocket size hand-held imaging
devices may have widespread applications in medicine. In
particular, a hand-held scanner may complement a stethoscope
as a general diagnostic device. Achieving the physical size
and reduced power consumption of such a device requires a
relatively low channel count system. In this paper we explore
synthetic aperture imaging methods producing reasonable im-
age quality with a very small active channel count. These
methods should be directly applicable to hand-held system
design.
A conventional phased array (PA) imager excites all array
channels to form a transmit beam [9]. Similarly, every channel
contributes to receive beam forming. For an -element phased
array, the -scan signal, , and continuous wave angular
point spread function, , are
(1)
(2)
where and , respectively, are the echo signal com-
ponent and beam forming delay for the receive, transmit
element combination, , and is the element
separation. The first and second summations correspond to
transmit and receive beam forming. Although only the re-
ceiver is dynamically focused in such systems, full phased
array imaging results in high electronic signal to noise ratio
as well as good spatial and contrast resolution. The price
for this is many parallel transmit and receive circuits. For
example, today’s state of the art 128 channel scanners have 128
independent transmit and receive circuits. Even given modern
electronic integration, such a system cannot meet the power
and size requirements of a hand-held system.
An alternate approach is synthetic aperture imaging where
a large aperture is synthesized by moving, or multiplexing, a
small active aperture over a large array [10]–[12]. For an -
element synthetic aperture with one active element (SAF), the
beam sum and continuous wave array response are
(3)
(4)
430 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ULTRASONICS, FERROELECTRICS, AND FREQUENCY CONTROL, VOL. 42, NO. 3, MAY 1995
where and , respectively, are the echo signal and
beam forming delay for the th element. Synthetic aperture
methods are used in many applications such as radar [13],
[14], sonar [15], [16], and ultrasonic imaging [17]–[25]. They
are very effective for special applications such as catheter
based imaging where both system and probe simplicity are
mandatory [26], [27]. SAF is attractive for a hand-held device
because: 1) cost and power consumption are low since the
active channel count is low; and 2) higher spatial resolution
is possible since full dynamic focusing is performed on both
transmit and receive. Unfortunately, synthetic aperture imag-
ing has some serious flaws for real-time medical applications,
including: 1) low electronic signal to noise ratio due to the
small active transmit aperture; 2) poor contrast resolution
due to significantly higher side lobes compared to a phased
array system; 3) susceptibility to motion artifacts since an
aperture must be reconstructed from multiple firings; and 4)
increased data storage since multiple rf -Scans must be
buffered prior to beam forming. In the remainder of this paper
we explore variations on traditional synthetic aperture methods
to minimize these problems without a major sacrifice in system
simplicity.
A major constraint on all ultrasound systems is frame rate.
High frame rates must be maintained for a wide range of
medical applications. In a conventional phased array imaging
system there is a simple trade-off between frame rate and the
number of beam lines per frame. For each beam, the time
needed to acquire all acoustic echoes to a depth is simply
, where is the sound velocity. If a particular frame rate
is required, then the number of beams per frame is determined.
That is, the number of beams per frame is simply
(Frame period) (5)
To adequately characterize the sound field produced by an
array aperture, beams must be spaced at intervals satisfying
the spatial Nyquist criterion. For example, an array with
half wavelength elements needs independent pulse-
echo beams to satisfy the Nyquist sampling criterion over
a conventional 90 sector, where is the number of array
elements. Therefore, there is a direct trade-off between active
aperture size (i.e., spatial resolution) and frame period. Using
this analysis, the maximum numerical aperture for a 90 sector
imaged at 20 frames per second to a depth of 200 mm is 68
(i.e., 136 for half wavelength element spacing), assuming
no parallel beam forming.
For synthetic imaging, a similar constraint on aperture size
exists. Again, the number of array firings is restricted by
the expression given in (5). For synthetic aperture imaging,
however, a firing corresponds to excitation of a sub-array
usually emulating the radiation pattern from a single element
and reception by a single element, or a small subset of
elements. Consequently, for conventional synthetic aperture
imaging with a single active element, a numerical aperture of
96 (i.e., 192 for half wavelength element spacing) can
be synthesized for imaging to a depth of 200 mm at 20 frames
per second.
In this study we propose synthetic aperture imaging tech-
niques consistent with these frame rate restrictions. All meth-
ods are based on aperture synthesis using an active multi-
element receive subaperture and single element transmit syn-
thesis using an appropriately phased subaperture. A specific
multi-element approach is presented producing significantly
higher electronic signal to noise ratio and contrast resolu-
tion compared to conventional synthetic aperture imaging.
Although not rivaling the overall performance of a full phased
array operating over the same total aperture, this system may
represent a reasonable approach for hand-held applications.
In the next section the complete multi-element system,
along with a slight variant on the basic approach, is presented
together with phasing of a multi-element transmitter to emulate
a single element radiation pattern with increased acoustic
power. Section III covers the experimental investigation of
multi-element synthetic aperture methods including a compar-
ison to conventional imagers. Limitations of the experimental
studies and further possible improvements in the performance
of multi-element synthetic aperture methods are discussed in
Section IV.
II. MULTI-ELEMENT SYNTHETIC APERTURE
As an alternative to conventional SAF and phased array
imaging, we have explored multi-element synthetic aperture
methods with small active element count but with image
quality approaching phased array systems. Two methods have
been investigated: multi-element synthetic aperture focusing
(M-SAF) and multi-element synthetic phased array (M-SPA).
Each method uses a defocused active transmit subaperture
of elements to emulate a high power, single element
transmitter. Echoes are recorded by individual elements of
a element receive subaperture. These subapertures are
stepped across an -element array. To synthesize the complete
aperture, similar to SAF, image points are reconstructed with
full dynamic focus on both transmit and receive. Each method
uses different spatial frequencies and acquisition strategies for
imaging, and therefore different sets of active transmit/receive
subapertures.
A. Element Synthesis
The acoustic power transmitted from a single array element
limits the electronic signal to noise ratio (SNR) of SAF.
Although beam forming from multiple transmissions increases
SNR, it is still not acceptable for many applications, especially
for medical imaging. To improve SNR, multiple elements can
be fired simultaneously with or without aperture apodization
(Fig. 1). Simultaneously firing multiple elements limits the
angular response and can be efficiently used only for linear
scanning and imaging with circular arrays; is not very effective
for sector scanning with linear arrays. Although aperture
apodization, such as with a “sinc” type window, results in
a transmit beam similar to a single element response, the
acoustic power capacity of each firing element is not fully
utilized and the total transmitted power, as expected, is very
close to that of a single element.
We synthesize a single element response with relatively
high acoustic power by properly phasing the active transmit
elements without introducing any amplitude scaling. This
KARAMAN et al.: SYNTHETIC APERTURE IMAGING FOR SMALL SCALE SYSTEMS
Fig. 1. Different transmit schemes: (a) single element and five elements, (b)
simultaneously excited, (c) simultaneously excited with aperture apodization,
and (d) defocused.
phasing forms a defocusing lens on the subaperture consisting
of the active elements (Fig. 1). A parabolic defocusing lens
can be realized using the following delays
(6)
where is the distance of the th element from the subaper-
ture center, and is the distance of the “defocal” point from
the subaperture. To produce a transmit beam as wide as the
full sector image, the value of must be chosen properly. The
lateral spread of the defocused beam, as expected, is inversely
proportional to the defocal length where the beam angle can be
approximated by and is the interelement
spacing. In this study, we consider a 90 sector image format,
and therefore, is chosen as . This value is used for
all defocused transmit beams discussed here.
The overall pressure field transmitted from the active sub-
aperture is the sum of fields from the individual elements
with defocusing delays. The pulse response of the defocused
subaperture is tested through simulations using a Gaussian
pulse, , where is the ultrasound frequency. Sim-
ulations of different element counts are obtained assuming
each element is a point radiator with . Fig. 2
shows the defocused beam patterns for 4 (c) and
12 (d) together with the beam patterns of a single
element (a) and simultaneously excited 12 (b) element
aperture. This figure represents the point spread function of
the transmitter at a range of 200 from the array. Both
magnitude and phase over 1 1 and 193
207 are given. In this format, a perfectly
spherical radiator should produce a uniform horizontal band in
magnitude and constant horizontal phase bands. As expected,
if multiple elements are fired simultaneously (Fig. 2(b)), a
spherical wave is emulated only over a limited angular extent.
In contrast, phase defocusing can produce radiation patterns
closely approximating a spherical wave, especially over a 90
sector. The highly nonspherical phase fronts at the beginning
431
of the 12 element defocused pattern (Fig. 2(d)) represent
small magnitude, early arriving waves of little consequence
in subsequent beam forming.
These results show that the synthesized response for simple
defocusing is very close to the single-element response for
small values of , such as 12. For large subapertures,
however, the response deviates significantly from a cylindrical
wavefront, especially in range. Although fixed defocusing de-
lays make the transmit beam range dependent, especially in the
near field of the subaperture, this dependence is insignificant
in the far field.
The defocused beam intensity, as expected, is lower than
the focused beam intensity produced by the same subaper-
ture. Fig. 3 illustrates the normalized mean intensity of the
defocused subaperture for different element counts. These
results are obtained from pulsed simulations with the same
parameters outlined above ( and ). The
mean is computed on a spatial kernel with a size of 90-
degrees and 0.5 along azimuth and depth, respectively, and
normalized to that of the single element beam. The functional
relation between the mean intensity and subaperture size can
be approximated as for the sake of simplicity. Based
on this approximation, SNR improvement for multi-element
firing over single-element firing is 10 dB. Note again
that all simulation results are obtained at a defocal length
of 2 with 2. The functional relation
between the mean intensity and subaperture size, as expected,
approaches a linear relation as the defocal length increases.
On the other hand, the mean intensity will be quite low for
very wide defocused beams. In general, SNR improvement by
a defocused active subaperture is limited by the defocusing
angle.
B. Multi-Element Synthetic Aperture Focusing (M-SAF)
This method uses spatial frequencies corresponding to re-
ceive, transmit combination , where the active receive
elements are restricted to the range .
Subapertures are stepped across the array one element at a
time with coincident transmit and receive subapertures. Active
element combinations contributing to the beam sum and data
acquisition are illustrated in Fig. 4 and Fig. 5(b), respectively.
For an element array, the -scan and continuous wave
array response of M-SAF are
(7)
(8)
where is the parabolic defocusing delay of the th channel
and the spatial response of the defocused element transmit
subaperture is assumed to be omnidirectional. Note that the
beam forming delay, , is the same for all elements on the
432 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ULTRASONICS, FERROELECTRICS, AND FREQUENCY CONTROL, VOL. 42, NO. 3, MAY 1995

(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)
Fig. 2. Simulated one-way pulsed response of the subaperture. The magnitude and phase distributions have 60 dB and 2 dynamic display ranges, where
white and black gray levels correspond to the maximum and minimum values, respectively. (a) Kt = 1, (b) Kt = 12 with simultaneous excitation,
and (c) Kt = 4 and (d) Kt = 20 with defocusing.

transmit subaperture because they synthesize a single element The first term in is due to the full element
located at the subaperture center. The summation over transmit aperture. The second term results from the element receive
subaperture (over index ) is realized in transmission, and subaperture with processing to suppress grating and side lobes
hence is not explicitly performed in synthesis. due to the first term (see Fig. 6(a)). The equivalent aperture
KARAMAN et al.: SYNTHETIC APERTURE IMAGING FOR SMALL SCALE SYSTEMS
Fig. 3. Mean intensity of simulated defocused transmit beam for different
6
subaperture sizes. The mean is computed over beams within =4 and
0.25  in azimuth and range, respectively, from the beam center.
Fig. 4. Active transmit/receive element combinations contributing to the
beam sum.
domain function, corresponding to the Fourier transform of
, is symbolically illustrated in Fig. 6(b), where PA and
SAF patterns are also shown for comparison. In the limiting
case, M-SAF with 1 is identical to SAF.
For real-time operation, the synthesized aperture size and
the active element count of M-SAF must be chosen such that
(9)
(frames/s) (range/firing)
For example, at 20 frames/s and 200 mm range,
must be less than or equal to 192.
433
C. Multi-Element Synthetic Phased Array (M-SPA)
This method synthesizes the nonredundant spatial frequen-
cies of a phased array imager. It can produce full phased
array images but with SNR loss and longer acquisition times.
For an -element phased array, there are possible trans-
mit/receive combinations. However, almost half are redundant;
the signals and are dual, and thus one of them can be
ignored yielding a total of 2 independent record-
ings. To efficiently capture all independent spatial frequencies,
receive/transmit element combinations are sampled as shown
in Fig. 4, where the number of receive channels is either
or on all firings.
Data acquisition for this method is illustrated in Fig. 5(c).
On each firing, elements are excited with a defocusing
pattern emulating a single element radiation pattern emanating
from the center of the subaperture. Similarly, elements
simultaneously receive echoes on each firing. Since is
much less than the total number of elements in the array,
6 multiple firings must be performed at the same transmitter
position. Over these firings, the position of the active
receivers is moved to capture all nonredundant transmitter-
receiver pairs for that transmitter position. The center of the
transmit subaperture is then stepped by one array element,
and the process repeated until all independent transmit-receive
pairs across the array are captured.
With this scheme, the total firings per frame is
(firings/frame) (10)
where indicates the smallest greater integer. At worst, one
active channel is idle for every two data acquisition steps. The
beam sum and lateral array response of M-SPA are
(11)
(12)
where
if
(13)
else.
The effective aperture size of the synthesized phased array
is . The for a particular set of
parameters is plotted in Fig. 6(a) and the equivalent aperture
domain function is given in Fig. 6(b).
For real-time imaging, the number of active elements in
receive must be chosen properly to maximize such that
(14)
(frames/s) (range/firing)
For 20 frames/s, 200 mm range, and 1540 m/s, the
firings/frame must be less than or equal to 192, and thus the
corresponding combinations are (3, 32), ( 7, 48),
(11, 64), (21, 80), and (25, 96). These particular combinations
satisfy the above constraint and minimize the number of idle
active channels. Note that to synthesize an -element phased
array the actual array size must be 1.
434 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ULTRASONICS, FERROELECTRICS, AND FREQUENCY CONTROL, VOL. 42, NO. 3, MAY 1995

(a)

(b)

(c)
Fig. 5. Data acquisition strategies: (a) and (b) active transmit and receive subapertures, and the acquisition steps of (c) M-SAF and (d) M-SPA.

D. Outline of System Parameters where SNR is the SNR of a single element synthetic aperture
Table I outlines some of the factors affecting overall per- recording. An SNR improvement of 10 dB is expected
formance for the different techniques. The SNR is computed for a multi-element transmitter, but the defocusing reduces
assuming uncorrelated additive electronic noise on receive, this gain to about 10 dB (estimated experimentally).
KARAMAN et al.: SYNTHETIC APERTURE IMAGING FOR SMALL SCALE SYSTEMS 435

TABLE I
SYSTEM PARAMETERS COMPARING METHODS WHERE Ne = N 0 Kr +1 AND B = v=f(frames)2
g
2 (range=firing ) WITH A 90 SECTOR ANGLE AND A MINIMUM f/NUMBER OF 2
PA M-SPA M-SAF SAF
Transmit Channel Complexity N Kt Kt 1
Receive Channel Complexity N Kr Kr 1
SNR/SNR0 (dB) 10 log N3 10 log (Kt Ne (Ne + 1)=2) 10 log (Kt Kr Ne ) 10 log (N)
Transmit Focusing fixed dynamic dynamic dynamic
Storage __ __ Ne (Ne + 1)=2 Kr N e N
Ne (Ne + 1)=2 Kr N e
Beam Sums
p2N  B
N
Ne  B
N
Maximum Aperature Size Ne j N2K+2 j  B N≤B
Motion Compensation —— required required required

flexible beam forming through digital processing. In particular,

adaptive beam forming employing aberration correction and
adaptive spatial filtering for image enhancement can be im-
plemented efficiently using the stored records. The proposed
techniques involve relatively more storage and coherent ad-
ditions. Also, synthetic aperture imaging necessitates motion
compensation for real-time applications.

III. EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION

The proposed synthetic aperture methods are investigated
experimentally and compared to conventional approaches us-
ing rf data acquired from three different phantoms. A phantom
containing only six wire targets is used to measure beam
patterns and SNR. Another phantom containing diffuse scat-
terers and four cyst regions is used to test contrast resolution
by computing the average contrast to noise ratio (CNR) for
the cysts. The contrast to noise ratio is an appropriate way
to quantitate contrast resolution in speckle generating objects
[28]. Additionally, a standard ultrasound resolution phantom,
(a) which contains wire and cyst objects as well as diffuse
scatterers, is used to test image quality in general. Throughout
this paper, these phantoms are referred to respectively as: Wire
Phantom, Cyst Phantom and Standard Phantom.
For our experimental studies, phased array imaging with
both dynamic transmit and dynamic receive focusing is con-
sidered the “gold-standard” (GS-PA) achieving the best image
quality with a finite array size. -scan images of each phantom
for all imaging methods including GS-PA are reconstructed for
qualitative comparison. Mean and standard deviation of SNR
and CNR results over the wire and cyst targets, respectively,
for different aperture sizes and/or active element counts are
presented to illustrate general trends including spatial variation
of the results. All SNR and CNR results are normalized by
GS-PA counterparts.

(b)
Fig. 6. (a) Simulated point spread functions for continuous wave excitation
with d = =2 at a steering angle of =4. (b) Equivalent aperture functions
corresponding to the point spread functions shown in (a).
System complexity, defined as the number of active channels,
for multi-element imaging is reduced by a factor of
and , respectively in transmit and receive, compared
to phased array imaging. Synthetic aperture imaging enables
A. Data Acquisition
Complete rf data sets from each phantom are acquired
with an experimental system using a 3.5 MHz, 128-element
transducer array with 0.22 mm inter-element spacing (Acu-
son, Model #: V328). All possible rf -scans from every
transmit/receive element combination, a total of 16 K records,
are collected, where only a single element is active both
in transmit and receive. Each -scan is sampled at 13.89
MHz with 12-bits, and has 2 K samples corresponding to a
spatial range of about 120 mm. To reduce noise imposed by
436 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ULTRASONICS, FERROELECTRICS, AND FREQUENCY CONTROL, VOL. 42, NO. 3, MAY 1995
Fig. 7. B -scan images of wire phantom: (a) GS-PA, (b) PA, (c) M-SPA, (d)
SAF and (e) M-SAF.
the data acquisition system, signal averaging over successive
acquisitions was employed with the final data stored as 16-
bit words. All beam forming and image reconstruction are
carried out digitally to emulate a digital imaging system. Also,
sampled rf data were filtered with a digital bandpass filter for
additional noise removal.
B. Image Reconstruction
Although any arbitrary scan format can be used for syn-
thetic aperture processing, all images presented here were
reconstructed on a standard sector scan grid with 200 beam
lines positioned at constant increments of over a 90
sector. Each rf -scan is digitally mixed with a complex
carrier followed by low pass filtering to obtain the complex
baseband representation of the signal. Beams are formed by
time delaying, phase rotating and summing these complex
baseband signals using a standard dynamic aperture approach
with a minimum /number of 2. The output of the beam former
is a complex valued image in - format. -scan images
are produced from these data through envelope detection, gain
compensation and scan conversion, followed by logarithmic
compression.
Fig. 8. B -scan images of cyst phantom: (a) GS-PA, (b) PA, (c) M-SPA, (d)
SAF and (e) M-SAF.
C. -Scan Images
Wire Phantom: Fig. 7 shows -scan sector images of the
Wire Phantom displayed over a 50 dB display dynamic range
where each image corresponds to a different technique. The
image of each point target represents the point spread func-
tion of the imaging system at that location. All side lobes
above 50 dB are visible. A comparison of GS-PA and PA
images illustrates the effects of fixed/dynamic transmit focus,
especially in the near field. Although the aperture size of
-SPA is approximately one half that of PA, its image
quality approaches that of PA because of dynamic transmit
focusing. -SAF and SAF have higher side lobes and finer
main lobes and phased array imagers. Large grating lobe
artifacts are present in SAF images whereas grating lobes are
virtually eliminated in -SAF. -SAF also exhibits reduced
side lobes compared to conventional synthetic aperture. In
general, measured beam patterns closely match theoretical and
simulated predictions in previous sections.
Cyst Phantom: Fig. 8 shows -scan images of the Cyst
Phantom over a 50 dB display dynamic range. The phantom
was constructed from gelatin with nylon particles used as
ultrasonic scatterers at a concentration sufficient to produce
fully developed speckle. Each cyst region does not contain
KARAMAN et al.: SYNTHETIC APERTURE IMAGING FOR SMALL SCALE SYSTEMS
Fig. 9. B -scan images of standard phantom: (a) GS-PA, (b) PA, (c) M-SPA,
(d) SAF and (e) M-SAF.
any scatterers. The ringlike structure around each cyst has
slightly different scatterer density than the rest of the phantom.
This slight concentration around the border was purposely
produced to highlight potential artifacts near the cyst border.
The diameter of each cyst is about 20 mm.
In general, M-SPA cyst detectability is close to those of GS-
PA and PA. Because the transmit focus is fixed at midrange
(95 mm) on the PA image, its contrast resolution away from
this position is slightly degraded compared to those of GS-PA
and M-SPA. Range dependent contrast resolution is clearly
observable in the cysts and the ringlike structures around the
cysts. Low contrast detectability of -SAF is much better
than that of SAF, but it is not as good as those of phased
array imagers. Comparing M-SAF to conventional phased
array and synthetic aperture images, contrast resolution is
closer to phased array than to synthetic aperture. Clearly, the
contrast resolution of SAF is the worst of all since the low
contrast, ringlike structures cannot be differentiated from the
cysts. Moreover, the cysts, especially the ones nearest to and
farthest from the array (at the top and bottom of the image),
are not easy to discriminate from speckle.
These images clearly illustrate that the average speckle
size of synthetic aperture (M-SAF and SAF) is smaller than
437
Fig. 10. Mean intensity of six wire echoes as a function of transmit sub-
aperture size.
that of a synthetic phased array (M-SPA) because the spatial
frequency bandwidth of synthetic apertures is approximately
two times that of a synthesized phased array.
Standard Phantom: -scan images of the Standard Phan-
tom for each imaging technique are presented in Fig. 9.
The phantom is a tissue mimicking ultrasound resolution
phantom (RMI Model #412) containing wire targets, cysts and
distributed scatterers. A portion of the sector at the right side
is black because one wall of the phantom is within the sector.
This configuration is useful to test acoustic noise, where that
portion of the image will be completely black if the CNR is
infinite.
Phased array images (GS-PA, PA and M-SPA) illustrate
the effect of fixed/dynamic transmit focus on image quality.
Artifacts in the black portion arise both from acoustic and
electronic noise. PA has more artifacts in the dark region
compared to GS-PA. The fixed transmit focus decreases the
CNR, and also slightly degrades SNR. Hence these artifacts on
the PA image are due to both reduced CNR and SNR relative to
GS-PA. Comparison of M-SAF and SAF indicates that M-SAF
almost completely eliminates grating lobe problems whereas
SAF has serious artifacts due to grating lobes.
D. Intensity of Defocused Transmit Beam
To test simulations presented in Section II-A, the mean
intensity from the six wires of the Wire Phantom is measured
for different transmit subapertures using a single receive
element. Since the wires are distributed in azimuth, the angular
response of the receiver slightly influences this measurement.
Such variation has little influence on the final results, though,
and hence is ignored. The mean is computed over a 5 (20
samples) temporal kernel for each wire echo and normalized
to the mean echo value with a single transmitting element.
Fig. 10 illustrates the normalized mean intensity for differ-
ent defocused transmit subapertures. The functional relation
between the mean intensity of wire echoes and subaperture
size can be approximated as 1.25 . Note that a similar
438 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ULTRASONICS, FERROELECTRICS, AND FREQUENCY CONTROL, VOL. 42, NO. 3, MAY 1995
(a)
(c)
Fig. 11. Expected and measured relative SNR: a) GS-PA and PA, b) SAF, c) M-SPA, and d) M-SAF.
relation between mean intensity and size, , is obtained
for the simulations given in Fig. 3. Therefore, the experiments
(Fig. 10) are in close agreement with simulations (Fig. 3),
indicating that the improvement in transmitted beam intensity
from a -element defocused subaperture is on the order of
, where the defocal length is one half of the subaperture
size . This particular result depends on the
defocusing scheme and array parameters.
E. SNR Results
Theoretical SNR relations of multi-element transmit systems
(see Table I) cannot be tested directly using rf data acquired
with a single firing element. Therefore functional SNR rela-
tions for the emulated systems in this study are obtained and
tested experimentally. For our emulated system, the expected
SNR for PA (same for GS-PA), M-SPA, M-SAF and SAF are
(b)
(d)
10 10 , 10 and 10
, respectively, where focusing and defocusing effects
are ignored.
Experimental SNR results are obtained from the Wire Phan-
tom. To do this, -scan images without logarithmic compres-
sion are used. The signal power at each target is obtained from
the rms image brightness at pixels within a small kernel over
that target. Similarly, the noise power is estimated from the
rms signal within a kernel including no reflectors and no side
lobe contributions. The SNR for each method is calculated at
each target location, and normalized by the SNR of GS-PA
with 128. Then, the mean and standard deviation of the
normalized SNR over all 6 targets are calculated. These com-
putations are performed for different array and/or subaperture
sizes. Fig. 11 depicts SNR results on a dB scale. Each point
represents 20 , where and are
the mean and standard deviation of the normalized SNR. Each
KARAMAN et al.: SYNTHETIC APERTURE IMAGING FOR SMALL SCALE SYSTEMS
figure also shows the expected SNR based on the functional
relations given above.
In general, measured SNR results match expected values
within the standard deviation for all imagers. The measured
SNR of GS-PA matches expectations where the relatively
small standard deviation indicates less spatial variation com-
pared to other schemes. The SNR of PA shows a different
characteristic with the standard deviation increasing with in-
creasing aperture size. This variation is primarily due to the
fixed transmit focus and the fixed minimum f/number of 2.0.
The SNR of M-SPA increases with array size and subaperture
size up to 64 with 11, and stays almost
constant thereafter. SNR improvement for M-SAF with
12 is not as significant as with 3 12. The SNR of
SAF has an almost constant standard deviation for different
array sizes.
F. CNR Results
To quantitatively test detectability of a low contrast lesion
within a speckle generating object, the CNR of each method
is investigated using the experimental data acquired from
the Cyst Phantom. Sufficient signal averaging was used for
these studies to insure that contrast measurements were not
influenced by electronic noise. CNR is calculated by dividing
the image contrast by the speckle standard deviation. All com-
putations are performed on a logarithmic scale, as discussed in
[28], where the contrast is defined as the logarithmic difference
between mean values of image kernels fully within and outside
the cysts. That is,
(15)
where is the mean intensity in dB of the cyst, and and
are the mean and standard deviation of the intensity in
dB within the speckle. The CNR is computed for each of the
four cysts within the phantom using a 60 dB display dynamic
range. The computed CNR for each method is normalized
to that of the 128-element GS-PA. The mean and standard
deviation of CNR over the four cysts are computed to include
any spatial dependence. Fig. 12 presents the CNR for different
array and/or subaperture sizes.
Normalized CNR values of GS-PA and PA vary within 0.66
to 1.0 with array size between 16 and 128, where
the dependence on array size is almost logarithmic for this
particular cyst size. The standard deviation of CNR for GS-
PA increases with array size whereas that of PA increases with
array size up to 64 and then slightly decreases. The mean CNR
of M-SPA, as expected, is less than that of PA, especially for
small array sizes. For example, the CNR’s of M-SPA and PA
for an array size of 64 elements are 0.89 and 0.91, respectively.
Spatial variation of CNR for M-SPA increases significantly
with array/subaperture size.
The mean CNR of M-SAF varies between 0.40 to 0.88
for a subaperture size from 3 to 24. M-SAF shows a near
logarithmic CNR behavior with subaperture size. This figure
illustrates that differential CNR improvements achieved by
a one element increase in the subaperture size, from odd
to even values, is more significant compared to an increase
439
TABLE II
TYPICAL VALUES OF ARRAY SIZE AND ACTIVE ELEMENT
COUNTS, AND CORRESPONDING SNR AND CNR RESULTS
PA M-SPA M-SAF SAF
Ne
Effective Aperture Size, 128 64 117 128
K
Active Transmit Elements, t 128 11 12 1
K
Active Receive Elements, r 128 11 12 1
Expected Relative SNR (dB) 0 -20 -21 -42
Measured Relative CNR 1 0.9 0.8 0.3
of 3 elements from even to odd values. For example, CNR
values for 8, 11, and 12 element subaperture are 0.708,
0.711, and 0.755, respectively. Even valued results in
better suppression of grating and side lobes compared to odd
valued subapertures, since the cw radiation pattern from an
even valued is exactly 0 at grating lobe positions. The
CNR of SAF is the worst of all schemes in terms of both
mean and standard deviation: the mean varies between 0.23
and 0.29 for array sizes between 16 and 128 elements while
the standard deviation is within 23 to 35 percent of the
mean.
IV. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
Multi-element synthetic aperture methods were investigated
both theoretically and experimentally. The overall performance
of each method was evaluated quantitatively in terms of SNR
and CNR and qualitatively with -scan phantom images.
Table I and Figs. 7–9 show that reasonable image quality can
be obtained for a system with about 10 active channels in both
transmit and receive. Such a system, integrated with an LCD
display, can be produced in a small package appropriate for
personal computer based and hand-held scanners.
Theoretical SNR and measured CNR for typical combi-
nations of array size and active element count are given in
Table II, where the frame rates of M-SPA and M-SAF are
about 20 and 30, respectively, for a 200 mm imaging depth.
CNR results are normalized to the CNR of the 128-element
PA. Multi-element synthetic aperture imaging methods show
better performance than SAF in terms of SNR and CNR,
and produce better images than standard synthetic aperture
imaging, approaching phased array quality.
Another variable in synthetic aperture imaging not explicitly
considered in this manuscript is element spacing. Element
spacing can be manipulated to change both spatial and contrast
resolution. For example, the grating lobes present in a classic
SAF image can be completely removed if spacing is used
instead of the spacing assumed here. Unfortunately, such
a system would have twice the number of elements. Generally,
element dimension must also be considered in optimizing
overall performance.
All synthetic aperture imaging techniques, including the
multi-element aperture methods discussed in this paper, move
system complexity from channel electronics to data processing.
Digital beam forming ASIC’s can be used effectively for
real-time processing of synthetic aperture data. Multi-element
synthetic aperture methods can also be implemented in various
alternate forms with different tradeoffs between complexity
and quality. To decrease complexity further, the active receive
440 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ULTRASONICS, FERROELECTRICS, AND FREQUENCY CONTROL, VOL. 42, NO. 3, MAY 1995
(a)
(c)
Fig. 12. Measured relative CNR: (a) GS-PA and PA, (b) SAF, (c) M-SPA, and (d) M-SAF.
subaperture and/or synthesized array can be undersampled
[14]. This results in reduced active channel count and data
size while maintaining subaperture and/or synthesized array
sizes. However, image quality will be reduced due to grating
lobes produced by undersampling. Furthermore, multi-element
synthetic aperture methods can also be realized with random
array techniques [29]. In particular, active receive channels
can be distributed randomly over the array by reorganizing the
active transmit/receive element combinations shown in Fig. 4.
In this case, the point spread function for the multi-element
synthetic focusing technique will be different than that given
in (8) while (12) still holds for the multi-element synthetic
phased array.
The quality of multi-element synthetic aperture images can
be improved further by minimizing the effects of imper-
fect transmit defocusing through beam pattern optimization
and/or optimal filtering. In particular, the flight time of the
(b)
(d)
defocused composite pulse can be accurately measured for
image reconstruction points [30], and thus deviation from a
cylindrical phase front can be compensated by choosing the
beam forming delays accordingly. Recent studies on synthetic
aperture imaging [26], [31] have demonstrated the efficiency of
such techniques. Consequently, spatial domain inverse filtering
of multi-element synthetic aperture baseband data can be
effective to further suppress side lobes [26], [32].
In general, contrast resolution is a function of main lobe
to side lobe energies. Thus, detectability of a low contrast
lesion depends on its size relative to the main lobe width.
Measurements on the Cyst Phantom were based on fixed size
cysts and therefore do not include CNR variations due to cyst
size. Measurements on the Wire Phantom produce the point
spread function of each system and therefore can be used to
predict the CNR for different sized cysts. Future studies will
quantitate CNR variations due to cyst size.
KARAMAN et al.: SYNTHETIC APERTURE IMAGING FOR SMALL SCALE SYSTEMS
Multi-element synthetic aperture methods necessitate an
increased frame rate with limited aperture and imaging depth
and/or motion compensation for real-time imaging. For imag-
ing to a 200 mm depth, M-SAF with 128 and M-SPA
with 64 and 11 achieve 30 and 20 frame/s,
respectively. Should faster imaging be required, an M-SAF
imager with 64 can image to a 150 mm depth at 80
frames/s, corresponding to a 12.5 ms acquisition time. Note
that the array size for M-SPA and M-SAF is different for
real-time application. Additionally, motion and phase com-
pensation techniques can effectively be applied to successive
firings of M-SAF [33]–[38]. These techniques can also be used
for M-SPA with partially overlapped receive subapertures or
randomly selected receive elements in successive acquisition.
Two-dimensional motion can be estimated by correlation-
based block matching [39]–[42] using “low resolution” images
reconstructed from each receive subaperture. Note that the
final image of the multi-element synthetic aperture is the
sum of these low resolution images. Therefore, a motion
compensated final image can be obtained by correcting low
resolution images prior to summation. Preliminary studies
have shown that the correlation coefficient between images
of two successive 12-element subapertures (11 overlapping
elements) is about 0.75 and 0.96 for speckle and wire targets,
respectively. They also indicate that the accuracy of motion
estimation in range, as expected, is much higher than in
azimuth. Future studies will focus on increasing the correlation
coefficient between images used for correlation analysis and
experimentally demonstrating the accuracy of motion com-
pensation. Proper motion compensation is the key to real-time
application of the multi-element synthetic aperture imaging
methods presented in this paper.
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Mustafa Karaman (M’89) received the B.S. degree
from Middle East Technical University, Ankara,
Turkey, in 1986, the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from
Bilkent University, Ankara, in 1988 and 1992, re-
spectively, all in electrical and electronics engineer-
ing.
He is currently a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the
Bioengineering Department of the University of
Michigan, Ann Arbor. His research interests are
in VLSI signal processing and medical ultrasound
imaging.
Pai-Chi Li received the B.S. degree in electri-
cal engineering from National Taiwan University,
Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C., in 1987 and the M.S. and
Ph.D. degrees from the University of Michigan,
Ann Arbor, in 1990 and 1994, respectively, both
in electrical engineering systems.
From 1987 to 1989 he served as a Signal Officer
with the R.O.C. Army. He was a Research Assistant
with the Department of Electrical Engineering and
Computer Science from 1990 to 1994. He joined
Acuson Corporation, Moutain View, CA, as a Mem-
ber of the Technical Staff in June 1994. His current research interests include
ultrasonic imaging and signal processing.
Dr. Li was the recipient of the Distinguished Achievement Award in
Electrical Engineering Systems for his outstanding academic achievement at
the University of Michigan.
Matthew O’Donnell (M’79–SM’84–F’93), for photograph and biography, see
p. 82 of the January issue of this TRANSACTIONS.