High Frame Rate Imaging Using Multi-Line Transmission for Ring-Array Ultrasound Systems

Ultrasound computed tomography (USCT) with ring arrays faces inherent tradeoffs between frame rate, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and image quality. Conventional synthetic aperture (SA) method yields limited frame rates with poor SNR, while multi-element strategies (multi-element SA or plane wave or diverging wave) are constrained by unfocused beams and inherently limitations of delay-and-sum (DAS) beamforming. In this study, we propose a multi-line transmission (MLT) strategy for ring array system, generating focused beams via activating multiple subarrays simultaneously to boost SNR and maintain high frame rates. Furthermore, we also propose a novel adaptive beamforming (ABF) method integrating noise-adaptive Wiener filtering and nonlinear compounding scheme for enhanced noise and interference suppression. Results show that the proposed methods markedly improve the image quality in terms of contrast and resolution compared with conventional methods. Overall, the proposed methods hold potentials for high-quality, high-frame-rate ring array imaging.