Synthetic Aperture Sequential Beamforming for phased array imaging

Synthetic Aperture Sequential Beamforming (SASB) is adapted for phased array ultrasound imaging. The primary advantage of using SASB is an improved lateral resolution without storing the raw channel data which can be realized on ultrasound systems with a relatively simple frontend. The performance of the beamforming technique is evaluated with simulations in Field II and by off-line processing of phantom data using a commercial ultrasound scanner. Results show that the lateral resolution improved by 20% in comparison to conventional dynamic receive beamforming.