Broadband Reduction of the Second Harmonic Distortion During Nonlinear Ultrasound Wave Propagation

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• 作者：Mirza Pasovic ; Mike Danilouchkine ; Guillaume Matte ; Antonius F.W. van der Steen ; Olivier Basset ; Nico de Jong ; Christian Cachard
• 关键词：Ultrasound contrast agent ; Harmonic imaging ; Nonlinear propagation ; Second harmonic reduction
• 刊名：Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology
• 出版年：2010
• 出版时间：October 2010
• 年：2010
• 卷：36
• 期：10
• 页码：1568-1580
• 全文大小：531 K

文摘

Ultrasound contrast harmonic imaging and detection techniques are hampered by the harmonic distortion of the ultrasound wave caused by the nonlinearities of the medium. To increase the discrimination between the tissue and ultrasound contrast agents at higher harmonics, we investigate a tissue harmonic suppression technique. The main attention of the research is the signal that is introduced at the source and is constructed out of several discrete frequency components from the second harmonic band. Therefore, this method was coined as the multiple component second harmonic reduction signal or multiple component SHRS. By adjusting the amplitude and phase of discrete components and simultaneously propagating multiple component SHRS with the imaging signal, the nonlinear distortion of the ultrasound waveform is considerably reduced. Using the numerical simulation, the optimal parameters for multiple component SRHS were deduced. The simulations results were corroborated in the water tank experiments and showed 40 dB reduction with respect to the fundamental, covering up to 75 % of the entire second harmonic band. In the other series of experiments with the clinically used contrast agent, the uniform increase in agent-to-tissue ratio of 7.4 dB over a relatively large region of imaging was observed. The use of the proposed method in the everyday clinical practice can improve discrimination between the tissue and the contrast agent in harmonic imaging. (E-mail: mirza.pasovic@creatis.insa-lyon.fr)