Abstract
In the paper the concept of synthetic aperture used for high
resolution/high frame rate ultrasonic imaging is reviewed. The synthetic
aperture technique allows building extended “virtual” apertures,
synthesized from smaller real aperture resulting in improved lateral
resolution along full penetration depth without sacrificing the frame rate.
Especially, four methods, synthetic aperture focusing (SAF), multi-element
synthetic aperture focusing (M-SAF), synthetic receive aperture (SRA) and
synthetic transmit aperture (STA) are addressed. The effective aperture
function, describing two-way, far field radiation is a useful tool in beam
pattern analysis. Some basic notations, which are used to calculate the
effective aperture are introduced in Appendix.
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