Quantitative time resolved acoustic microscopy using wavelet analysis

Quantitative acoustic microscopy can reveal geometric and elastic properties of solid targets as well as of living cell structures in high resolution. One of the major problems is the low signal to noise ratio (SNR) because of very high attenuation and weak reflections from the surfaces. Digitization of Ascans further allows only low pulse repetition frequency (PRF) so that necessary averaging leads to unacceptable acquisition time. Wavelet analysis was introduced to overcome this problem. It will be shown that it is possible to improve SNR by artificial limitation of bandwidth without significant worsening of time resolution