Application of digital signal processing techniques to synthetic aperture focusing technique images

Synthetic aperture focusing technique (SAFT) has become a popular alternati ve to transmission-reception focused arrays (TRFA) in order to reduce hardw are complexity and cost associated to ultrasonic (UT) imaging systems. A sh ortcoming of SAFT processing is that it introduces artifacts that distort t he images. However, as SAFT is sequential, efficient digital processing alg orithms can be used to improve image quality. In this paper, several digita l processing techniques are proposed including apodization, deconvolution, dynamic focusing, deflection and envelope extraction. A pipeline architectu re which allows execution of these algorithms in parallel for real-time ima ging is also proposed. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.