Volumetric Imaging Using Fan-Beam Scanning with Reduced Redundancy 2D Arrays

Phased array processing with a fully populated 2D array produces the best image quality but requires excessive number of active parallel front-end channels. Here we explore four array designs with reduced redundancy in spatial frequency contents. To minimize the number of firings we employ fan-beam processing, where ID arrays are used to insonify 2D planar slices of the volume at successive firing events; echo signals are collected by the receive array elements. The array designs are compared based on simulated point spread functions, frame rate, motion susceptibility, and signal-to-noise ratio.