Barker-coded ultrasound color flow imaging: theoretical and practical design considerations.

Barker-coded excitation is applied to improve the sensitivity versus resolution tradeoff for ultrasound color flow imaging (CFI). Direct sequence encoding and complex baseband decoding methods that enable flexible combination of demodulation frequency and Barker-chip duration are proposed. Based on a general Wiener decoding filter formulation, three different conditions that pertain to the relationship between the Barker-chip duration and demodulation frequency are found, such that they result in real, complex symmetric and complex asymmetric decoding filter sequences, respectively. It is also shown that the matched filter and the inverse filter represent two extreme cases of the Wiener filter, and the latter is proposed for decoding Barker-coded CFI signals with maximum range sidelobe suppression. Some practical considerations such as coding gain, integrated sidelobe level (ISL) and peak sidelobe level (PSL) for various decoding filter lengths, and the influence of flow rate also are analyzed. Linear array imaging of steady flow in straight tubes is simulated based on a 4-cycle base pulse at 6.25 MHz, a 5-chip Barker code, a 32-tap decoding filter, and standard color flow data processing. The resultant color flow images demonstrate the expected improvements in penetration and axial resolution.

Sound speed correction in ultrasound imaging.

A constant sound speed of 1.54 mm/micros is generally used by ultrasound imaging systems for delay and timing. However, the body's sound speed in-homogeneity can lead to defocusing and increased clutter. To provide an improvement using standard transducers, the sound speed used in delay and timing was computed using different sound speeds. We observed improvement in lateral resolution and clutter in phantom, OB, abdominal, and breast imaging. In OB and abdominal imaging using a 4 MHz curved array, 1.48 mm/micros provided higher image quality in many situations. In breast with an 8 MHz linear array, 1.44 mm/micros provided better images in some cases. To provide an automated way to determine and adjust the sound speed used by the imaging system, an algorithm was developed that determines the sound speed that produces the best overall lateral image quality by analyzing the spatial frequency content in a single B-mode frame of channel data using images reconstructed using various trial sound speeds. The metric produced correlates well with the observed best lateral image quality.