A New 3-D Imaging Technique Integrating Ultrafast Compounding, Hadamard Encoding, and Reconfigurable Fresnel Lensing

Crossed electrode arrays address some of the challenges associated with 3-D ultrasound imaging because of the significant reduction in the number of elements ( 2{N} versus {N}{{2}} ). However, creating a two-way focused 3-D image in real time is difficult with these arrays because azimuth and elevation dimensions cannot be beamformed at the same time. This work describes a new 3-D imaging technique that uses the flexibility of bias-sensitive substrates to create a high-quality elevation focus on a crossed electrode array. The principle behind this technique is to perform conventional compound imaging with an azimuth set of electrodes while implementing a bias controllable elevation lens with an elevation set of electrodes. On transmit, the biases are chosen to mimic a Fresnel lens. Then, on receive, the Hadamard coding is implemented along the elevation dimension. After decoding, we gain the RF data for each element across the elevation aperture even though there is effectively only one channel in that dimension. A 30-MHz, 128-element crossed electrode relaxor array was fabricated on a 1-3 electrostrictive composite substrate and was used to demonstrate the performance of the imaging technique. The on-axis -6-dB beamwidths were simulated to be 175 and 150~mu text{m} in the azimuth and elevation directions, respectively, and the focus remained isotropic in the furthest elevation slice. Images were generated of a wire phantom to confirm the performance of the azimuth and elevational radiation patterns with good agreement between simulation and experiment. High-resolution 3-D volumetric images were generated of an ex vivo rat brain. Images of the cerebellum showed that the white and gray matter tracts could clearly be visualized with isometric resolution in both the azimuth and elevation dimensions.