Ring array processing for forward-looking intravascular and intracardiac ultrasonic imaging

Forward-looking (FL) catheter-based imaging systems are highly desirable for guiding interventions in IVUS and ICE applications. One of the main challenges in the array based FL-IVUS systems is the large channel count which results in increased system complexity. Synthetic phased array processing with reduced firing count simplifies the front-end and hence can enable 3-D real-time imaging. Recently, we have investigated dual-ring arrays suitable for IVUS and ICE imaging. In this dissertation, we present and explored two different optimized array designs based on dual circular and hexagonal rings that are suitable for synthetic phased array processing with reduced number of firings. We used simulated annealing to optimize the wideband PSF of the array system. The optimal firing set from different Tx-Rx elements eliminates most of the redundant spatial frequencies in the coarray and produces low side lobes and number of firings. The optimization procedure starts with the calculated wideband PSF of the full set coarray including all Tx-Rx firing combinations. In every iteration step, a predefined coarray with only one element change is compared with the previous set in terms of cost function. For the two designs, we obtained optimal reduced set by minimizing both the peak side lobe level and the integrated side lobe energy. For two test cases, we obtained reduced sets of 512 and 256 coarray elements, and constructed 2-D PSFs. The simulation results show that the optimized dual circular and hexagonal ring arrays provide up to 10-dB and 5-dB improvements, respectively, in peak near side lobe level with no widening in main lobe width. Our test results show that the side lobe levels of the dual circular and hexagonal arrays can be remarkably and controllably reduced by using simulated annealing optimization, and the resulting optimal array designs can meet the resolution and speed requirements of 3-D real time IVUS and ICE imaging.