Extension of Fourier-Based Techniques for Ultrafast Imaging in Ultrasound With Diverging Waves

Ultrafast ultrasound imaging has become an intensive area of research thanks to its capability in reaching high frame rates. In this paper, we propose a scheme that allows the extension of the current Fourier-based techniques derived for planar acquisition to the reconstruction of sectorial scan with wide angle using diverging waves. The flexibility of the proposed formulation was assessed through two different Fourier-based techniques. The performance of the derived approaches was evaluated in terms of resolution and contrast from both simulations and
in vitro
experiments. The comparisons of the current state-of-the-art method with the conventional delay-and-sum technique illustrated the potential of the derived methods for producing competitive results with lower computational complexity.