Adaptive Scan Sequence for Real-Time Ultrasound 3-D Imaging

An adaptive scan sequence is proposed for real-time ultrasound three-dimensional (3-D) imaging. Generally, the refresh rate of 3-D imaging is limited by the view window, resolution and sound speed in the human body. If the object is transformed or moved during the data set acquisition, the 3-D image will be distorted. To realize a high refresh rate for 3-D imaging, a reduction of the number of transmissions is required. Using a small number of transmissions results in a small view window or low resolution. In this paper, we propose a method to adaptively modify the spatial and temporal beam density according to the local motion of the object. We present 3-D images of a phantom with high frame rate, high resolution and wide view-angle window, significantly reducing the size of the full real scan raw data set.