Experimental evaluation of noise generated by grating lobes for a sparse 3D ultrasound computer tomography system

Nicole V. Ruiter; Michael Zapf; Torsten Hopp; Hartmut Gemmeke

doi:10.1117/12.2008197

29 March 2013 Experimental evaluation of noise generated by grating lobes for a sparse 3D ultrasound computer tomography system

Nicole V. Ruiter, Michael Zapf, Torsten Hopp, Hartmut Gemmeke

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 8675, Medical Imaging 2013: Ultrasonic Imaging, Tomography, and Therapy; 86750N (2013) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2008197
Event: SPIE Medical Imaging, 2013, Lake Buena Vista (Orlando Area), Florida, United States

Abstract

3D ultrasound computer tomography (USCT) requires a large number of transducers approx. two orders of magnitude larger than in a 2D system. Technical feasibility limits the number of transducer positions to a much smaller number resulting in a sparse aperture and causing artifacts due to grating lobe effects in the images. Usually, grating lobes are suppressed by using a non-sparse geometry. Thus, there is no quantitative estimation method available how much the image contrast is degraded when a sparse aperture is applied and how much the contrast is improved when adding more transducers, changing the overall aperture or the object. In this paper the effect of the grating lobes on the image quality was analyzed for a spherical, a hemispherical and the semi-ellipsoidal USCT aperture: The background noise due to grating lobes is very similar for the three apertures and mainly influenced by the sparseness and the imaged object. A model for noise reduction was fitted to simulated and experimental data, and can be used to predict the peak-signal-to-noise- ratio for a given object and number of aperture positions.

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Nicole V. Ruiter, Michael Zapf, Torsten Hopp, and Hartmut Gemmeke "Experimental evaluation of noise generated by grating lobes for a sparse 3D ultrasound computer tomography system", Proc. SPIE 8675, Medical Imaging 2013: Ultrasonic Imaging, Tomography, and Therapy, 86750N (29 March 2013); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2008197

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