Adaptive aberration correction using PARCA

Abstract

The Parallel Adaptive Receive Compensation Algorithm (PARCA) uses multiple receive beams to compensate for imperfect beam forming. Previous studies demonstrated that PARCA can correct for controlled aberrations in tissue equivalent phantoms. Here, we have applied PARCA to human abdominal scans. Images were acquired from volunteers with a modified real-time scanner using a 1-D, 128 element, 26.2 mm array operating at 3.75 MHz, with 236 beams comprising a frame. For each transmit beam, 118 receive beams were reconstructed and processed to produce a single compensated A-scan. PARCA processed images show increased contrast between blood vessels and tissue and improved overall image quality. These images demonstrate the effectiveness of PARCA on clinical ultrasound images degraded by aberrations.