General Electric Company

Martin Marietta Corporation

Koeunyi Bae

Moayyed A Hussain

Kenneth Wayne Rigby

Kai-Bor Yu

In a digital ultrasound imaging system, artifacts due to spurious ultrasound reflections from a highly reflective object outside the region of interest are reduced in magnitude by apparatus included in the beamforming system of the digital imaging system. A null is formed in a specified direction in the ultrasound beam patterns by perturbing the time delay on each receive channel. After estimating the direction of the highly reflective, interfering object and computing a time delay perturbation using a very fast algorithm, a null approximately 10 dB deep is introduced into each beam in the direction of the interfering object. This null reduces the magnitude of artifacts in the image, thereby providing image enhancement.

Ultrasound image enhancement using beam-nulling

An active array antenna for use, for example, in a radar system, includes elemental antennas, each with a T/R module, distributed over a circular aperture. For lowest cost, the aperture is thinned. The T/R modules are operated at maximum output, to achieve maximum DC-to-RF efficiency, and for simplicity. A phase controller controls the phase shift which is imparted by each module to its signal, to form a main beam and its associated sidelobes. A perturbation phase generator portion of a phase controller adds a perturbation phase shift selected, in conjunction with a particular thinning distribution, to form a relatively wide null in the sidelobe structure, in which signal transduction is reduced. In a radar context, this null may be placed on a source of ground clutter or a jammer.

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Koeunyi Bae