A Study of Sidelobe Reduction Based on FFT in Ultrasound Images

FFT를 기반으로 한 초음파 영상의 Sidelobe 영향 감소에 관한 연구

  • 정목근 (대진대학교 전자·통신공학부)
  • Published : 1999.02.01

Abstract

Focusing is widely used to increase the resolution in ultrasound transmit field. It increases signal levels returning from the mainlobe direction and decreases those due to sidelobe directions. However, when the sidelobes cannot be completely canceled, the resulting image resolution is greatly deteriorated. This paper proposes a method of improving the resolution by scaling the received signal according to the difference between the mainlobe and sidelobe levels computed in the frequency domain by the use of Fourier transform. The proposed method is verified by computer simulation and experiments, and is shown to be highly effective in narrowing the mainlobe width and decreasing the sidelobe levels.

송신 초음파 음장에서 해상도를 증가시키기 위하여 집속방법을 널리 이용한다. 집속은 영상점이 있는 Mainlobe 방향에서 돌아온 반사 신호의 크기를 증가시키지만, sidelobe에 의한 반사 신호는 상쇄되어 크기가 줄거나 없어진다. 그러나 집속한 뒤에도 sidelobe의 신호가 완전히 제거되지 않을 경우 영상의 해상도를 크게 저하시킨다. 본 논문은 초음파의 음장특성에 따라 수신된 신호를 Fourier transform하여 주파수 영역에서 sidelobe와 null 방향에서 돌아오는 수신신호의 크기를 구하여 비율에 따라 영상값을 scaling함으로써 sidelobe의 영향을 줄여 해상도를 향상시키는 방법을 제안하였다. 제안한 방법을 컴퓨터 시뮬레이션과 실험으로 검증하여 mainlobe의 폭이 줄고 sidelobe가 감소함을 보였다.

Keywords

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