The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea (한국음향학회지)

The Acoustical Society of Korea (한국음향학회)
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Evolution of the synthetic aperture imaging method in medical ultrasound system

초음파진단기 합성구경영상법의 진화

  • Received : 2022.08.08
  • Accepted : 2022.09.01
  • Published : 2022.09.30
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Abstract

Medical ultrasound system has been widely used to visualize the lesion for diagnostics in most medical service site including hospitals and clinics thanks to its advantages such as real time operation, ease of use, safety. Among many signal processing blocks of the system, one of the most important part that governs the image quality is the beamformer, and technologies for this part has been continuously developed in long time. The synthetic aperture imaging method, that is one of the major technologies of beamforming, was introduced to maximize utilizing the information delivered from the patient's body through the probe, and contributed to breakthrough of the image quality since it was introduced in around 1990's, and evolved continuously in decades. This paper reviews and surveys the process of development of this technology and expects future evolution.

초음파진단기는 실시간으로 손쉽고 안전하게 환자의 병변을 관찰할 수 있는 등의 다양한 장점으로 인해 병원, 의원 등의 의료현장에서 널리 활용되고 있다. 이 초음파진단기 신호처리 블록 중 하나인 빔포머는 초음파진단기 영상의 화질을 결정하는 부분 중 하나이다. 초음파진단기 기술의 발전과 더불어 이 빔포머와 관련된 기술들도 장기간 많은 발전을 이루어 왔는데, 이 기술들 중 하나의 주요 방법인 합성구경영상법(Synthetic Aperture Imaging method, SAI)은 프로브를 통해 수신한 신호가 운반해 온 환자로부터의 정보를 최대로 활용하기 위한 방법으로, 1990년대 경 최초로 초음파진단기에 도입된 이래 획기적 화질 향상에 기여해 왔고, 수십년동안 다양한 형태의 발전을 거쳐왔다. 이 논문에서는 이러한 진화과정을 살펴보고, 이 기술의 미래의 발전 방향을 예상해 본다.

Keywords

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