• Presently, one of the major challenges in translating the state-of-the-art clinical imaging (<15 MHz) performance to Pre-clinical Imaging (PCI) application is associated with the manufacturing of the high-frequency (HF) ultrasound array transducers.
• Although using high-frequency ultrasound (US) waves can yield better spatial resolution, the thickness of the crystal must be correspondingly reduced. However, manufacturing an array with thin crystals is a challenge.
• Therefore, there is a need for better techniques to improve ultrasound image quality for high-frequency imaging without an array transducer.

This Invention is a High-Frequency (HF) Ultrasound (US) imaging system which utilizes HF US waves (> 15 MHz) to obtain higher spatial resolution (<100 µm) using only a 2 – element transducer array.

System:

1. A first ultrasound transducer configured to transmit high frequency ultrasound waves in a medium being imaged.
2. A second ultrasound transducer and the first ultrasound transducer simultaneously, configured to receive reflected ultrasound waves from the medium being imaged and convert the reflected ultrasound waves into a plurality of electrical signals.
3. A processor electronically coupled to the first ultrasound transducer and the second ultrasound transducer.
4. The processor is configured to receive and process electrical signals along with the tracked position of the first ultrasound transducer and the second ultrasound transducer for generating an image.

Results:

• Experimental images of CIRS® (VA , USA) phantom obtained from PoC device are compared to those obtained with those obtained using recently proposed prior-arts of Virtual Source in front of transducer for DAS (VS-DAS) and F-DMAS (VS-DMAS).
• It can be readily appreciated that visually the image reconstructed by PoC device (Fig 4 (d)) is very close to ‘Reference’ (Fig 4 (a)) compared to others. Also, from Fig 4 (e-g) the contrast of the blood vessel is better in the than the others. PoC device reconstructed image.
• Proposed technology improved spatial resolution by more than 63 %, and Contrast (CR and GCNR) by more than 57 % over others.
• Thus, the results clearly demonstrate that proposed technology provides superior image quality.

A PoC device set up was made to demonstrate its performance on tissue mimicking phantoms and example in-vivo targets. Developed PoC mechanical US probe comprises focused and unfocused transducers along with Scanning mechanism and Position sensing system.

FIG. 1. A scanning mechanism performed by a hybrid high frequency ultrasound imaging system with focused (t1) and unfocussed (t2) transducers scanning the medium from left to right (in Lateral direction). FIG. 2. Block diagram of developed PoC device. FIG. 3. Illustrates experimental results.