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Efficient transmit beamforming in pulse-echo ultrasonic imaging

A high performance ultrasound imaging system requires accurate control of the amplitude of the array elements, as well as of the time delays between them, both in the transmit and receive modes. In transmission, conventional array aperture windowing implies a different driving voltage for each element of the array, an expensive solution for systems with a large number of channels. In this paper, we present a simple, versatile, and inexpensive beamforming method that operates the aperture windowing in the transmit mode, simply controlling the lengths of the electric pulses driving the array elements. Computer simulations and experimental measurements are presented for different types of arrays. They confirm that the proposed beamforming technique improves the contrast resolution of the imaging system, reducing the off-axis intensity of the radiated field pattern. Moreover, the axial resolution is slightly enhanced, because the overall length of the transmitted ultrasonic pulse is reduced.