TITLE:
An Adaptive Pulse Compression Filter for Ultrasound Contrast Harmonic Imaging
AUTHORS:
Jenho Tsao, Ming-Huang Chen
KEYWORDS:
Ultrasound Contrast Imaging; Square Law Pulse Compression; Adaptive Pulse Compression
JOURNAL NAME:
Engineering,
Vol.5 No.10B,
October
25,
2013
ABSTRACT:
Coded excitation is useful for ultrasound contrast
imaging to increase penetration and SNR, and improve the contrast to tissue
ratio (CTR). The waveform of bubble response depends greatly on bubble size,
the frequency and bandwidth of the excitation chirp signal. This makes the
pulse compression filter based on square-law be wrong for bubbles with changing
sizes. In this paper, an adaptive pulse compression (APC) filter for the second
harmonic of microbubble with varying size distribution is proposed. The APC
filter is designed based on the estimated power spectrum of the received bubble
harmonic echoes. Theoretical analysis and simulation studies are presented for
evaluating performance of the APC filter. For monodisperse bubble, the power
improvement factor of the APC filter can be more than 20 dB.