X-FMAS Beamforming Method for 3D Imaging Using Row-Column Addressed Array

Row column addressed (RCA) array have been considered as an efficient solution for ultrafast 3D ultrasound imaging in large field of view with significant reduction of channels. Due to lacking of focusing process, the coherent compounding of orthogonal plane wave (OPW) was developed for RCA array to obtain isotropic point spread function (PSF) by transmission with the rows and orthogonal reception with the columns or vice versa. In this work, we proposed X-FMAS beamforming technique, a method based on the spatial coherence of the complementary image frames and orthogonal reception apertures of RCA probe, to obtain lower side-lobe level of PSF and then higher contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) of ultrasound images. The simulated results of PSF show that the X-FMAS technique provides a 35dB reduction of side-lobe level compared with OPW, and it was found in phantom experiments that 10dB and 4dB gain of CNR of power Doppler images compared with OPW and XDoppler can be obtained using the X-FMAS method.