3D ultrasound imaging performance of a row-column addressed 2D array transducer: a simulation study

This paper compares the imaging performance of a 128+128 element row-column addressed array with a fully addressed 16x16 2D array. The comparison is made via simulations of the point spread function with Field II. Both arrays have lambda-pitch, a center frequency of 3.5 MHz and use 256 active elements. The row-column addressed array uses 128 transmit channels and 128 receive channels, whereas the fully addressed array uses 256 channels in both transmit and receive. The large size of the emulated row and column elements in the row-column addressed array causes ghost echoes to appear. The ghost echoes are shown to be suppressed when the sub-elements within each of the emulated row and column elements are apodized. The maximum ghost intensity is suppressed by 22.2 dB compared to using no apodization. With apodization applied, the full-width-at-half-maximum in the lateral direction for the fully addressed array is 2.81 mm, and 1.01 mm for the row-column addressed array. This shows that the detail resolution can be more than doubled using the row-column addressed array instead of the fully addressed array. The row column addressed array achieves a R-20 dB cystic resolution of 0.76mm, compared to 3.16 mm for the fully addressed array. The signicantly smaller R-20 dB-value for the row-column addressed array indicates that it can achieve a much higher contrast resolution than the fully addressed array.