CPC A61B 8/4494 (2013.01) [A61B 8/145 (2013.01); A61B 8/4444 (2013.01); A61B 8/4483 (2013.01); A61B 8/461 (2013.01); A61B 8/467 (2013.01); A61B 8/523 (2013.01); A61B 8/5207 (2013.01); A61B 8/58 (2013.01); G01S 7/5205 (2013.01); G01S 15/892 (2013.01); G01S 15/8913 (2013.01); G01S 15/8927 (2013.01); G01S 15/8929 (2013.01); G01S 15/8934 (2013.01); A61B 8/14 (2013.01); B06B 1/0622 (2013.01); G01S 7/52084 (2013.01)] | 12 Claims |
1. A method of producing volumetric data representing a region of interest within an object to be imaged, the method comprising:
transmitting ultrasound energy as an unfocused ultrasound ping towards a scatterer with a transmit aperture comprising at least one transducer element on an ultrasound transducer array;
receiving ultrasound echoes from the scatterer with a first receive aperture comprising a first receiver group of transducer elements on the ultrasound transducer array;
coherently combining echoes received by the elements of the first receive aperture;
forming first volumetric data with the coherently combined ultrasound echoes received by the first receive aperture;
receiving ultrasound echoes from the scatterer with a second receive aperture comprising a second receiver group of transducer elements on the ultrasound transducer array;
coherently combining echoes received by the elements of the second receive aperture;
forming second volumetric data with the coherently combined ultrasound echoes received by the second receive aperture; and
incoherently combining the first volumetric data and the second volumetric data to produce the volumetric data representing the region of interest.
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