Medical diagnostic ultrasound: radar roots and recent developments

Radar, sonar and medical ultrasonics exploit imaging techniques for detection of the position and backscattering/reflection strength of the target and its velocity. Velocity sensing techniques can be as simple as CW Doppler up to the multi-channel MTI. Imaging and Doppler ultrasonics creatively employing recent radar and sonar technologies are rapidly growing with numerous new exciting developments. High density, multi-elements linear array, phase array and annular array transducers benefit from the synthetic aperture and open a new era of a real time scanning of the biological structures with unprecedented quality. Color coding, tissue Doppler, contrast agents echo enhancement and other new, exciting developments are discussed.