Real-time 3D medical acoustic imaging using a concave mirror and a small element array

采用凹面镜和小单元阵列的实时三维医学声学成像仪需要探头与体表的大接触面积，因此皮肤脂肪层中脂肪含量的变化比传统成像仪要大，导致像差严重影响成像质量。因此，该方法应采用像差校正技术来抑制像差的影响。研究表明，在1 cm厚的脂肪层情况下，1.5 MHz的发射中心频率适合进行像差校正，在严重像差情况下，像差情况下的适当发射频率低于成像时的一半。

A real-time 3D medical acoustic imager with a concave mirror and a small element array needs a wide contact area between a probe and the body surface, and thus the variation of fat content in the cutaneous fat layer is supposed to be larger than a conventional imagers, causing the severe deterioration of image quality by aberration. Therefore this method should employ an aberration correction technique to suppress the influence of aberration. This study shows that the transmit center frequencies of 1.5 MHz are suitable for aberration correction in the case of a fat layer 1 cm thick, and under severe aberration conditions the proper transmit frequency for the aberration condition is lower than half of that for imaging.