A Novel Receive Spatial Beamformer for High-Resolution Ultrasonic Plane-Wave Imaging Using pMUTs

The proposed work introduces, for the first time, a novel Receive (Rx) Spatial Beamformer (RSB) for image reconstruction using a 6.5MHz linear array of PZT pMUTs with a narrow (30°) Field of View (FoV). The proposed methodology is validated experimentally with the results denoting an impressive lateral resolution below 1.5 mm in immersion. Compared to traditional image reconstruction algorithms, i.e., Delay-and-Sum (DAS), Delay-Multiply-and-Sum (DMAS), the proposed compound imaging technique drastically increased the Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) on average by 43.4% (20.7 dB), while maintaining a computational time equivalent to that of DAS.