Virtual Array Plane Wave Imaging

The Plane Wave Imaging (PWI) method, originally developed for medical images, was extended in various works for its use in Non-Destructive Testing (NDT). In this field the most frequent scenario presents the difficulty of refraction at the surface of the test piece, which must be accounted for the calculation of focal laws. Search algorithms are used for these calculations. The virtual array concept was proposed by the authors in previous works for Phased Array (PA) to reduce the number of computations. It was also applied to the Total Focusing Phased Array (TFPA) imaging method. The objective of this work is to apply the virtual array concept to PWI.