Extension of Coherent Multi-Transducer Ultrasound Imaging with Diverging Waves

The assessment of ultrasound images is hampered by limited spatial resolution and view-dependent artifacts. Both limitations depend on the small aperture of the transducers used in clinical practice, and may potentially be overcome by extending the effective aperture. The coherent multi-transducer ultrasound (CoMTUS) imaging method enables an extended effective aperture through coherent combination of multiple transducers. In this work, CoMTUS, originally developed and validated using plane waves, is extended to diverging wave imaging to widen the field of view, which, in CoMTUS, is limited to the intersection of the combined field of views. First phantom images produced using CoMTUS with diverging waves are presented here. Results show that CoMTUS with diverging waves has the potential to improve ultrasound image quality, improving resolution and target detectability. Compared with coherent DW compounding using a single probe, there is an averaged improvement in resolution of 26% and 2.3 dB increment in contrast.