ieee transactions on ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control, vol. 52, no.

1, january 2005 37
Coherent-Array Imaging Using Phased
Subarrays. Part I: Basic Principles
Jeremy A. Johnson, Student Member, IEEE, Mustafa Karaman, Member, IEEE,
and Butrus T. Khuri-Yakub, Fellow, IEEE
AbstractThe front-end hardware complexity of a co-
herent array imaging system scales with the number of ac-
tive array elements that are simultaneously used for trans-
mission or reception of signals. Dierent imaging methods
use dierent numbers of active channels and data collection
strategies. Conventional full phased array (FPA) imaging
produces the best image quality using all elements for both
transmission and reception, and it has high front-end hard-
ware complexity. In contrast, classical synthetic aperture
(CSA) imaging only transmits on and receives from a sin-
gle element at a time, minimizing the hardware complex-
ity but achieving poor image quality. We propose a new
coherent array imaging methodphased subarray (PSA)
imagingthat performs partial transmit and receive beam-
forming using a subset of adjacent elements at each ring
step. This method reduces the number of active channels to
the number of subarray elements; these channels are multi-
plexed across the full array and a reduced number of beams
are acquired from each subarray. The low-resolution subar-
ray images are laterally upsampled, interpolated, weighted,
and coherently summed to form the nal high-resolution
PSA image. The PSA imaging reduces the complexity of
the front-end hardware while achieving image quality ap-
proaching that of FPA imaging.
I. Introduction
A
rray-based imaging systems have been used for var-
ious applications, including radar, sonar, and medi-
cal ultrasound [1], [2]. In general, a collection of transmit-
ters emits electromagnetic or mechanical waves into the
medium to be imaged. The waves scattered or reected
by dierent parts of the medium then are received by a
set of sensors. The received signals are processed to form
an image with intensities that represent some physical pa-
rameter of the medium. Although applicable to a range
of array-based imaging system, the work presented in this
paper will be presented from the perspective of pulse-echo
ultrasound imaging using a phased array.
A typical phased-array ultrasound imaging system con-
sists of a one-dimensional (1-D) linear array of transduc-
ers that are capable of both transmitting and receiving
acoustic energy [3]. A short modulated pulse is transmit-
ted from each of the elements. The timing of the trans-
Manuscript received July 6, 2004; accepted August 11, 2004.
J. A. Johnson and B. T. Khuri-Yakub are with Stanford Uni-
versity, Image Guidance Laboratory, Stanford, CA (e-mail: public@
drjjo.com).
J. A. Johnson is also with Stanford University, Image Guidance
Laboratory, Stanford, CA.
M. Karaman is with Isik University, Department of Electrical En-
gineering, Istanbul, Turkey.
mission from each element can be adjusted to steer the
transmitted waveform to a desired direction. Additionally,
the timing can be set to cause the transmitted pulses to
converge, forming a beam that is narrowest at the desired
focal depth. When the wavefront crosses boundaries be-
tween materials with dierent acoustic impedances, a por-
tion of the pulse is reected or scattered back toward the
transducer array. These reected signals are received by
the elements of the array. In the same way that the trans-
mitted pulses can be timed to achieve beam steering and
focusing, the received signals can be delayed such that a
reection from a single point along the beam will add con-
structively. The process of steering and focusing the array
signals is called beamforming [4]. A simplied diagram il-
lustrating the concept is shown in Fig. 1.
Current ultrasound systems use a highly parallel hard-
ware architecture for signal conditioning between the
transducer array and the beamformer. For every trans-
ducer element that is active for a given ring event, an
independent front-end electronic processing channel per-
forms transmit/receiveswitching, amplication, ltering,
time-gain compensation, and digital-to-analog conversion.
A high-level block diagram of a phased array imaging sys-
tem is shown in Fig. 2, and Fig. 3 illustrates the front-
end hardware components. The cost and complexity of the
front-end hardware scales with the number of active chan-
nels [5][7]. The beamforming architecture determines the
number of active channels for a particular system design.
The image quality produced by an ultrasound system gen-
erally improves with the number of active channels, mean-
ing that better images correspond to the systems with
larger arrays and thus of greater cost and size.
One of the most space- and power-consuming parts of
a typical ultrasound imaging system is the front-end hard-
ware [5], [7]. This is especially true since the advent of dig-
ital beamforming, which has greatly reduced the back-end
hardware requirements [8], [9]. Early beamforming hard-
ware was primarily analog. The increase in performance
and decrease in size of digital and mixed-signal electronics
eventually enabled the implementation of digital beam-
formers. Unfortunately, the analog nature of the front-end
hardware has not experienced an equal reduction in cost
and size. High-end commercial ultrasound machines still
house the analog and mixed-signal, front-end electronics
within the base unit, requiring costly and bulky probe ca-
bles that contain dedicated coaxial transmission lines for
each transducer element. Although acceptable for todays
1-D arrays containing on the order of 100 elements, al-
08853010/$20.00 c 2005 IEEE
38 ieee transactions on ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control, vol. 52, no. 1, january 2005
Fig. 1. Delay-and-sum beamforming in a phased array ultrasound imaging system. The set of beamforming delays denes the steering angle
and focal distance of the transmit and receive beams.
Fig. 2. Block diagram of a phased array ultrasound imaging system.
ternate congurations will be needed for tomorrows 2-D
arrays consisting of thousands of elements.
Classical full phased array (FPA) imaging sweeps out a
sector image by electronically steering beams across image
space [10][14]. All N transducer elements are active dur-
ing both transmit and receive formation of each beam,
requiring N dedicated front-end processing channels as
shown in Fig. 4(a). In addition to high front-end hardware
complexity, the large number of received signals required
to form each beam causes a signicant increase in beam-
former complexity. One benet of using all N elements is
that high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is achieved.
A variety of beamforming methods have been devel-
oped, each requiring a dierent number of active chan-
nels [15], [16]. Thomenius [17] has provided an overview
and history of beamformers. Classical synthetic aperture
(CSA) techniques using a single channel for transmit and
receive minimize the hardware complexity [18]. Synthetic
aperture techniques were rst developed for radar [19] and
later adapted to ultrasound imaging [20]. Synthetic aper-
ture was rst used with linear arrays with reconstruction in
the spatial domain [21], but it since has been modied for
use with circular arrays [22], [23], and frequency-domain
reconstruction methods also have been developed [24]. For
the standard linear array method, a single processing chan-
nel is time multiplexed across all N transducer elements
[Fig. 4(b)]. Because only a single element is used for both
transmit and receive, the transmitted power and receive
sensitivity are minimal and lead to a low SNR.
Array imaging techniques have continued to strike com-
promises between CSA and FPA, aiming to improve the
SNR of CSA methods and reduce the number of chan-
Fig. 3. Front-end hardware for a phased array imaging system. T/R:
transmit/receive switch; TX: transmit driver; LNA: low-noise ampli-
er; TGC: time-gain compensation; LPF: low-pass anti-alias lter;
ADC: analog-to-digital converter.
nels required for FPA imaging. Karaman et al. [25] have
suggested transmitting from multiple elements to emulate
a more powerful transmit element for synthetic aperture
imaging, and later described how to correct for motion and
phase aberration [26]. Lockwood et al. [27] used a similar
method by transmitting from ve virtual elements and us-
ing the full aperture in receive in order to achieve higher
frame rates needed for 3-D imaging with a 1-D transducer
array. Frazier and OBrien [28] proposed a synthetic aper-
ture method for increasing the lateral resolution by consid-
ering virtual elements located at the focal point. Nikolov
and Jensen [29] combined the previous two techniques to
achieve increased frame rate and improved resolution in
elevation for 3-D imaging with a mechanically scanned 1-
D transducer array. Nikolov et al. [30] introduced recur-
sive ultrasound imaging as a method for increasing frame
rate. Synthesizing an eective aperture for 3-D imaging
using 2-D transducer arrays using only the outermost el-
ements was described in [31]. The use of coded excitation
is a current area of study that has benets of improved
frame rates, increased SNR, and improved depth pene-
tration [32][35]. Multielement synthetic aperture using a
frequency-modulated signal also has been proposed as a
method for increasing the SNR [36]. Early proposals for
reducing the number of active channels in phased-array
imaging systems did so by transmitting on a single central
portion of the array and receiving on a number of overlap-
ping [37] or adjacent [38] subarrays. Later developments
johnson et al.: proposed phased subarray imaging method 39
Fig. 4. Front-end hardware conguration for (a) phased array,
(b) synthetic aperture, and (c) proposed phased subarray imaging
methods.
improved the frame rate of subarray imaging by acquiring
a subset of the beam lines and interpolating the others
[39][41]. These methods are limited in use to narrowband
imaging systems and did not achieve FPA-equivalent im-
age quality due to a smaller eective aperture.
This paper presents a new method that combines the
principles of phased-array and synthetic-aperture imaging
methods to reduce the system cost and size by decreas-
ing the number of active channels while maintaining high-
image quality. The method presented is most useful for
cost- or size-constrained real-time acoustic imaging sys-
tems. The phased-subarray technique described here ex-
tends the capabilities of the earlier subarray imaging ap-
proach [39][41] by contributing in two ways. First, the
transmit subarray is not xed in the center of the array
but is placed at a number of positions across the entire
array. This allows the realization of a signicantly wider
eective aperture compared to the earlier methods using a
xed-transmit subarray, resulting in improved lateral res-
olution. Second, a new reconstruction method is presented
that uses a set of subarray-dependent, 2-D lters for wide-
band imaging. This extends the capabilities of previous
reconstruction methods that used 1-D lateral lters suit-
able for narrowband imaging.
This paper presents the basic principles and theory of
phased subarray (PSA) imaging. The companion paper
presents the performance of the PSA method on simu-
lated and experimental data [42]. The paper is organized
as follows. In Section II basic terminology is described that
will provide the framework for the presentation of the PSA
imaging technique. Section III describes the data acquisi-
tion and image reconstruction methods for PSA imaging
in beamspace. Sections IV and V present the same process
described in the frequency domain along with reconstruc-
tion ltering. Section VI includes a generalization of the
PSA method. The theoretical performance of PSA imaging
is provided in Section VII and compared to FPA imaging.
II. Basic Definitions
A. Spatial and Spatial Frequency Responses
The response of a phased-array imaging system at the
far-eld or focal depth can be approximated using linear
systems theory. The performance of the system then is
characterized by its two-way point spread function (PSF)
in the spatial domain, or equivalently, its transfer function
in the spatial frequency domain [43][45]. There is a one-
to-one relationship between these two functions given by
the 2-D discrete Fourier transform (DFT):
u[m, n] =
2D
{U[p, q]}, (1)
where U[p, q] is the PSF, and p and q are the axial and lat-
eral indices, respectively; u[m, n] is the transfer function,
and m and n are the axial and lateral spatial frequency in-
dices, respectively; and
2D
{} is the 2-D DFT operator.
The 1-D lateral spatial frequency response at a given axial
spatial frequency is referred to as the coarray or the eec-
tive aperture, and can be computed as the convolution of
the transmit and receive aperture functions [46], [47]:
u[n] = a
T
[n] a
R
[n]. (2)
The axial PSF of a phased-array imaging system is
determined by the transmit pulse, s(t), centered at time
t = 0:
U[p] = s
__
p
P
2
_
r
_
, (3)
where P is the number of axial samples and r is the axial
distance between beam samples. The 2-D spatial frequency
40 ieee transactions on ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control, vol. 52, no. 1, january 2005
response can be expressed as the product of the lateral and
axial spatial frequency responses:
u[m, n] = u[m] u[n], (4)
where u[m] is the 1-D axial spatial frequency response
given by the 1-D DFT of the axial PSF. Note that the
temporal frequency response of the excitation pulse deter-
mines the axial spatial frequency response of the system,
and are related by a scaling factor.
B. Comatrix Representation
A useful technique for visualizing the relationship be-
tween the aperture function and the coarray is by means
of the comatrix. Comatrix representation was introduced
in [25] and formalized as the transmit-receive apodization
matrix in [48]. Each transmit/receive element pair con-
tributes to a specic bin of the coarray representing a spe-
cic lateral spatial frequency. Each entry in the comatrix
represents a specic pair of single transmit element and
receive element. For example, the topmost comatrix entry
represents transmitting on array element 16 and receiv-
ing from array element 1. The transmit and receive arrays
shown above each comatrix in Fig. 5 are the same phys-
ical array, and are used to index into the comatrix with
the given element numbers. The numbers in the comatrix
indicate the corresponding coarray bin. All entries in a co-
matrix column contribute to the same coarray bin. For the
FPA example in Fig. 5(a), all TX/RX pairs are acquired
at once as all array elements are used during each ring
event. This results in a comatrix with all elements equal
to unity, and a coarray equal to a triangle function.
The comatrix and coarray are also useful for evaluating
methods in which individual TX/RX pairs are obtained
through separate rings. In contrast to FPA imaging, CSA
imaging transmits and receives to/from a single element at
a time. As shown in Fig. 5(b), each of these ring events
contributes to a single comatrix and coarray entry. The
corresponding comatrix structure is in the form of the
identity matrix, resulting in a coarray equal to the shah
[49] or comb function. The resulting coarray is zero valued
at every other bin, which results in grating lobes.
In the previous subaperture imaging work done by
Karaman and ODonnell [40], a single transmit subaper-
ture located at the center of the array res multiple times,
and a receive subaperture is scanned across the full array.
The comatrix and coarray representation of this modal-
ity is shown in Fig. 5(c). The width of the coarray is less
than that of both FPA and CSA imaging, and thus the
lateral resolution is poorer. The PSA imaging method ad-
vances this approach by translating both the transmit and
receive subapertures to obtain an FPA-equivalent eective
aperture.
III. Phased Subarray Image Formation
A 1-D, N-element array is subdivided into K overlap-
ping subarrays, each consisting of M elements. The sub-
array pitch is J elements, thus the amount of subarray
overlap is MJ. A general condition that is satised for a
valid subarray conguration is:
J(K 1) = N M. (5)
The rst M-element subarray can be used as a reference
subarray and expressed by its aperture function:
a
0
[n] =
_
1, n [0, M 1]
0, otherwise
. (6)
The aperture functions of all K subarrays then can be
expressed in terms of this reference subarray:
a
k
[n] = a
0
[n kJ], k [0, K 1], (7)
where k is the subarray index.
For the sake of simplicity, the examples in this paper
and results in the companion paper [42] assume that the
subarray pitch is equal to half the width of a subarray
(J = M/2). In this case, the full array responsea triangle
functionis equal to a linear combination of the subarray
responses, each a narrower triangle function with its base
aligned with the peak of the adjacent triangle function.
As a result, the interpolation lters only need to suppress
aliases and do not need to reshape the amplitude response
of each subarray function. The interpolation lters there-
fore simplify to bandpass lters. When this condition is
not met, the lters also must modify the amplitude re-
sponse in order to reconstruct an FPA-equivalent image.
Methods for designing these lters are beyond the scope
of this paper and are presented in [50].
As shown earlier in Fig. 4(c), the number of front-end
transmit and receive processing channels is equal to the
number of elements in each subarray. The hardware may
be designed to allow the active transmit subarray to dif-
fer from the active receive subarrayas is the case in
Fig. 4(c)or may be designed such that the same subarray
is used for transmit and receive. Both cases are discussed,
but the discussion primarily focuses on the latter case due
to simplicity of presentation.
Fig. 6 illustrates all acquisition and processing steps in-
volved in PSA image formation as compared to FPA. The
object of PSA imaging is to generate an FPA-equivalent
set of Q
FPA
beams by transmitting and receiving on only
M elements at a time. This full set of Q
FPA
beams forms
a high-resolution image. Although each of the K subarrays
could acquire a high-resolution image, the frame rate is in-
creased by acquiring only a subset of the Q
FPA
beams over
the same sector angle. Each of the K subarrays acquires
a total of Q
PSA
subarray beams, forming a low-resolution
image.
With the exception of limiting the transmit and receive
elements to those of the transmit and receive subarrays,
the beamforming used to generate each subarray image is
identical to that used for FPA imaging. The beamformer
delays are calculated in the same manner as for FPA imag-
ing; for example, the delays shown in Fig. 1 required to
johnson et al.: proposed phased subarray imaging method 41
Fig. 5. Comatrices and coarrays for dierent imaging methods. Shaded comatrix elements correspond to TX/RX element or subarray pairs
that contribute to the image. The diagonal sum of the comatrix produces the coarray that represents the lateral spatial frequency response
of the imaging system. All gures correspond to a 16-element array with half-wavelength element pitch. (a) Phased array imaging uses all
elements in TX and RX. (b) Synthetic aperture imaging transmits and receives on the same single element, resulting in an undersampled
coarray. (c) Synthetic receive aperture imaging uses a single transmit subarray and several receive subarrays. (df) Three representative
phased subarray methods. (d) Seven overlapping subarrays are used for both transmit and receive (conguration used by examples in text).
(e) Four adjacent subarrays acquire some redundant spatial frequency information. (f) Four adjacent subarrays use all TX/RX subarray
combinations.
42 ieee transactions on ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control, vol. 52, no. 1, january 2005
Fig. 6. Image formation and reconstruction in the spatial domain. Right: FPA imaging directly acquires Q
FPA
beams using the full array.
Left: K phased subarrays sequentially acquire a subset (Q
PSA
) of the beams, forming K subarray images. These images are laterally
upsampled and interpolated to reconstruct the unacquired beams, then weighted and summed to form and FPA-equivalent image.
steer and focus the beam to the desire point would be the
same for FPA and for all of the subarray images. The sub-
array beam origins are located at the center of the full
array, not at the center of each subarray, as illustrated in
Fig. 7.
The next step is to form high-resolution subarray im-
ages from each of the low-resolution subarray images. Each
of the subarray images is rst upsampled laterally by a fac-
tor of L by inserting L1 zero-valued beams between the
acquired beams. An interpolation lter is applied to this
set of upsampled beams, reconstructing the empty beams
and leaving the originals intact. Two methods for design
of the reconstruction lter are presented in the next two
sections. The resulting K high-resolution subarray images
are then coherently weighted and summed to form the nal
PSA image. At this point, the nal PSA image is equiva-
lent to the FPA image.
Note that the equivalence of PSA imaging to FPA imag-
ing holds true in the far-eld or at the focal distance as
it depends on the Fourier transform relationship between
the aperture function and the beam pattern. The extent to
which the equivalence holds away from the focal distance
is shown experimentally in the companion paper [42].
The beam proles for each subarray dier from each
other and from the FPA beam prole; however, the equiv-
alent beam prole representing the PSA system at the
focal distance are equivalent to that of FPA imaging as
illustrated in Fig. 7. Although not obvious in the spatial
johnson et al.: proposed phased subarray imaging method 43
Fig. 7. Approximate beam proles for PSA and FPA imaging when acquiring the center beam. (a)(c) The beam proles for a single subarray
are wider at the focal point than the FPA beam prole. (d) The combined response of PSA is equivalent to a beam prole equal to that of
FPA imaging.
domain, this observation is clearer when considering that
the coarrays of PSA systems are equivalent to those of
FPA systems [compare Fig. 5(a) to Figs. 5(d)(f)].
IV. Narrowband PSA Processing
Due to the minimal support in the temporal frequency
domain of a narrowband system, its array response can be
approximated by the 1-D cross section through the coar-
ray at the center operating frequency. We refer to the lat-
eral spatial frequency response of a single subarray as a
cosubarray. In order to understand the function of the re-
construction lter, we outline the PSA procedure by illus-
trating the resulting cosubarrays at each step in Fig. 8.
The drawings represent a system with a 16-element array,
7 subarrays, each with 4 elements, and an upsampling rate
of 4 (N = 16, K = 7, M = 4, L = 4). The array in these
drawings is sampled with an element pitch of d = /2 to
avoid grating lobes, and Q
PSA
= 2M sin(/2) beams are
acquired to avoid aliasing in the lateral spatial frequency
domain.
The subarray aperture functions are shown in Fig. 8(a).
The corresponding cosubarraysequal to the convolution
of the transmit and receive aperture functionsare trian-
gle functions of width 2Mas shown in Fig. 8(b). These
cosubarrays correspond to acquiring all Q
FPA
beams with
each subarray. Because the subarray pitch, J, is equal to
half the subarray size, M/2, then these triangle-function
cosubarrays overlap one another by half the width of the
triangle, and an FPA-equivalent subarray can be recon-
structed as a linear combination of the cosubarrays.
The cosubarrays corresponding to the acquisition of
only Q
PSA
beams by each subarray are shown in Fig. 8(c).
Due to the band-limited nature of the ideal cosubarrays,
no information is lost when the beam sampling rate is suf-
ciently large (equivalently the subsampling ratio, L, suf-
ciently small):
Q
PSA
> 2M sin
_

2
_
. (8)
The upsampling and ltering steps performed in the spa-
tial domain correspond to reconstruction of the ideal co-
subarrays. The resulting cosubarrays after upsampling are
shown in Fig. 8(d). At this point, the cosubarrays con-
tain the lateral spatial frequency components of the origi-
nal cosubarrays in addition to periodic replicates of these
components shifted by multiples of 2N/L. The purpose of
the interpolation lter is to suppress the aliases while pre-
serving the original cosubarray response. The lateral spa-
tial frequency response of the ideal interpolation lters is
shown in black behind the original cosubarray components
in Fig. 8(d). The spatial frequency domain representation
of the ideal lter for each subarray can be written as:
H
k
[n] =

1,
(k 1)M
2
+ 1 n
(k + 1)M
2
0 otherwise
.
(9)
Because this is a bandpass lter, h
k
[q] is sinc-like and
thus the energy decreases further from the lter center.
The size of the lter is reduced by truncation. The resul-
tant rippling in the spatial frequency response is minimized
by applying a window function.
The reconstructed cosubarrays are found by applying
the lter transfer function to the upsampled cosubarrays,
and are shown in Fig. 8(e). These upsampled cosubarrays
are equivalent to the high beam rate cosubarrays shown
in Fig. 8(b). The nal PSA coarray [Fig. 8(h)] is formed
by linearly combining the upsampled coarrays [Fig. 8(e)]
using a triangular weighting function:
w
k
=
K + 1
2

k
K + 1
2

. (10)
The nal PSA coarray is equivalent to the FPA coarray
[Fig. 8(g)]. The closeness of this approximation is depen-
dent on the performance of the reconstruction lter.
V. Wideband PSA Processing
The PSA imaging for a wideband system diers from
narrowband imaging in that the 2-D spatial frequency re-
sponse must be taken into account. The 2-D spatial fre-
quency response is the sum of the coarrays over all tem-
44 ieee transactions on ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control, vol. 52, no. 1, january 2005
Fig. 8. PSA image formation and reconstruction in the lateral spatial freqency (coarray) domain. (a) Subarray aperture functions in array
space. (b) Ideal cosubarrays if full set (Q
FPA
) of beams were acquired. (c) Cosubarrays when a subset (Q
PSA
) of the beams is acquired by
each subarray. (d) Upsampling leads to periodic replication of the cosubarrays in (c). Reconstruction lters are designed as bandpass lters
to suppress the unwanted aliases. (e) Cosubarrays of the reconstructed subarray system should approximate ideal cosubarrays shown in (b).
By properly weighting and summing these responses, the nal coarray (e) is equivalent to the FPA coarray (g) corresponding to phased
array imaging with the full aperture (f).
poral frequencies contained in the transmit pulse. The lat-
eral spatial frequency width of the response varies linearly
with the temporal frequency of operation; the axial spatial
frequency extent of the 2-D spatial frequency response is
determined by the minimum and maximum temporal fre-
quencies present, f
min
and f
max
. The nonzero portion of
the 2-D spatial frequency response for an N-element array
therefore is limited to a trapezoidal region.
For example, consider the wideband cosubarrays illus-
trated in Fig. 9. The 2-D spatial frequency response of the
center M-element subarray acquiring Q
FPA
beams (high
beam rate) is shown in Fig. 9(a). A horizontal cross sec-
tion through any part of the nonzero spatial frequency
response yields a triangular function whose peak location
is indicated in Fig. 9(a) by the dashed line. For o-center
subarrays, the spatial frequency response is sheared pro-
portional to the distance of the subarray from the center
of the full array. Fig. 9(b) illustrates the spatial frequency
response of the end subarray.
The 2-D spatial frequency responses corresponding to
each stage of the PSA imaging system are outlined in
Figs. 9(c)(h). Because the beams are treated as analytic
signals, the negative temporal frequency response is zero;
therefore, the illustrations only show the response for pos-
itive temporal frequencies. The illustrations are similar to
those given in Fig. 8, except that only the responses for the
center and end subarrays are shown. With the exception
of using a 2-D rather than a 1-D lter kernel, the pro-
cessing steps are identical. The drawings are based on the
same system as in Figs. 7 and 8 (N = 16, K = 7, M = 4,
L = 4). The center frequency, f
0
, is identical to that used
in the narrowband example. However, the temporal fre-
quencies now range from f
min
to f
max
. This increase in
temporal frequency causes a corresponding increase in the
lateral spatial frequency bandwidth. Assuming that the el-
ement pitch is d =
min
2
, the number of beams that must
be acquired to avoid aliasing of the 2-D spatial frequency
response is:
Q
PSA
> 2M sin
_

2
_
. (11)
The drawings in Fig. 9 correspond to a system that is
slightly oversampled.
The spatial frequency responses of the 1-D lters used in
the previous section correspond to lateral frequency bands
that are constant over all temporal frequencies. Although
the 1-D lter is suitable for reconstructing the center sub-
array image, a 2-D lter kernel is needed for all other
subarrays because the lateral spatial frequency passband
varies with temporal frequency. The ideal passbands for
the center and end subarrays are indicated as dark gray
regions behind the original subarray spatial frequency re-
sponses in Figs. 9(e) and (f). After the appropriate 2-D
lters are applied to each subarray image, the result ap-
proximates the high beam rate spatial frequency response
[Figs. 9(a) and (b)]. The reconstructed subarray images
are then coherently weighted and summed, using the same
weights as given in (10). The nonzero portions of the sub-
array spatial frequency responses are all shown overlapping
one another in Fig. 9(g). A lateral cross section through
these subarray spatial frequency responses would reveal
that adjacent cosubarrays overlap one another by half their
johnson et al.: proposed phased subarray imaging method 45
Fig. 9. PSA image formation and restoration in the 2-D spatial frequency domain for wideband system consideration. Coarrays shown in
Fig. 8 correspond to horizontal cross-sections through these gures at the center frequency, f
0
. Shaded areas correspond to regions of nonzero
response. (a) Response of center subarray when full set (Q
FPA
) beams are acquired. (b) Subarray shift along the array causes a sheared
response relative to (a). (c) Critical beamsampling (Q
PSA
beams) leads to a laterally compressed frequency domain. (d) The wrapping
of the response in (b) is evident due to the subsampling of beamspace. (e), (f) Upsampling in beamspace leads to periodic replication of
the response in (c), (d), and requires reconstruction ltering to suppress the aliases. (g) The overlapping individual subarray responses are
weighted and summed to form (h) the overall response of the system, equivalent to FPA imaging.
46 ieee transactions on ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control, vol. 52, no. 1, january 2005
width independent of the temporal frequency. Fig. 9(h)
shows the 2-D spatial frequency response of the overall
PSA system, equivalent to that of FPA imaging.
The 2-D interpolation lter is applied in both the lat-
eral and axial dimensions by 2-D convolution. The sub-
array lters illustrated are best described in the spatial
frequency domain as shown in (12) (see next page). This
expression describes the lters shown in Figs. 9(e) and (f).
The lter for the center subarray is independent of tem-
poral frequency and, thus, is a sinc function in the spatial
domain. The spatial-frequency-domain representations of
the other subarray lters are sheared versions of the cen-
ter array lter. Just as for the 1-D case, the spatial lter
must be truncated and windowed. In this case, the lter is
truncated to a nite 2-D kernel over the axial and lateral
dimensions. A window function is applied to the ideal lter
to obtain the nal lter.
VI. Alternate Acquisition Methods
The PSA acquisition method presented earlier assumed
that the same subarray is used in transmit and receive.
Although this is the simplest method to describe and il-
lustrate, the reconstruction lters presented are equally
useful when reconstructing subarray images acquired by
other pairs of transmit and receive subarrays. The sim-
ilarities between these dierent methods of acquisition
are best visualized using the comatrix representation de-
scribed in Section II-B. Figs. 5(d)(f) illustrate the co-
matrices and resultant coarrays for three dierent PSA
acquisition methods. The comatrix for the example used
throughout this paper (N = 16, K = 7, M = 4, L = 4) is
shown in Fig. 5(d). Each of the small, gray diamonds cor-
responds to a ring event from one of the seven subarrays.
The dashed line indicates the overall coarray without any
weighting; applying the weights shown in Fig. 5(d) restores
an FPA-equivalent response.
The same overall coarray response can be acquired with
fewer subarrays, although with additional subarray image
acquisitions; Fig. 5(e) illustrates a conguration that uses
four subarrays (K = 4) to acquire 10 subarray images.
As an example, the cosubarray formed by transmitting
and receiving from the second subarray in PSA-1 is iden-
tical to that formed by PSA-2 by transmitting on the rst
subarray and receiving on the second. In order to avoid
distortion due to phase asymmetry, the opposite subar-
ray pair also must be usedthat is, transmitting on the
second and receiving on the rst. Because some of the co-
subarrays have been acquired twice using this method, the
weights for achieving an FPA-equivalent response are dif-
ferent. A third PSA example with only four subarrays uses
all TX/RX subarray pairs and is shown in Fig. 5(f). No
weighting is necessary for this method. The subsampling
and reconstruction are not illustrated using the comatrix
representation. However, the same principles apply regard-
less of the subarray pair used for acquisition. The subsam-
pling rate, the beam sampling requirement, and the recon-
struction ltersboth 1-D and 2-Dremain the same for
these alternate acquisition methods. The only part of re-
construction that diers are the weights used prior to sum-
mation. The primary dierences between these alternate
methods are due to the dierence in the total number of
rings. The two alternate PSA schemes (PSA-2 and PSA-
3) require an increased number of rings. The frame rate
is inversely proportional to the number of rings. While
the frame rate decreases, the SNR increases.
VII. Results
The reduction of front-end hardware complexity can be
represented by the ratio of the number of front-end hard-
ware channels required for PSA versus FPA imaging:
Complexity of PSA
Complexity of FPA
=
M
N
. (13)
Other theoretical performance metrics of FPA, CSA, and
PSA imaging are summarized in Table I and described
here in detail.
The number of rings per frame required for FPA and
PSA imaging is equal to the total number of beams formed:
B
FPA
= 2N sin
_

2
_
, and (14)
B
PSA
= 2KM sin
_

2
_
. (15)
CSA imaging does not form beams directly; rather, the
image is formed from pulse-echo scans acquired from indi-
vidual array elements. Therefore, the number of rings is
simply equal to the number of elements:
B
CSA
= N. (16)
The ratio of the number of rings required for the two
phased array methods is:
B
PSA
B
FPA
=
KM
N
=
_
2N
M
1
_
M
N
=
2N M
N
,
(17)
where the substitution for K is based on (5) with J =
M/2. Note that this ratio is bounded by:
B
PSA
B
FPA
< 2, (18)
meaning that the number of rings required for any PSA
conguration will never require more than twice the num-
ber of rings required for FPA imaging.
The frame rate of an ultrasound imaging system is de-
termined by the number of scans required per frame (B),
the velocity of sound in the medium (c), and the desired
imaging depth (R):
F
c
2RB
. (19)
johnson et al.: proposed phased subarray imaging method 47
H
k
[m, n] =

1,

_
K + 1
2
k
__
2
P
m1
_

_
K + 1
2
__
1
2N
n 1
_

< 1
0 otherwise
. (12)
TABLE I
FPA CSA PSA
Exact O() Example
1
Exact O() Example Exact O() Example
Number of front-end
N N 128 1 1 1 M M 32
hardware channels
Number of rings
2N sin(

2
) N 181 N N 128 2KMsin
_

2
_
KM 317
per frame (B)
Frame Rate (F)
c
4NRsin(

2
)
1
N
39
c
2RN
1
N
58
c
4KMRsin(

2
)
1
KM
23
Normalized SNR (dB) 20 log
10
(N

N) 63.2 20 log
10
(

N) 21.0 20 log
in
(M

KM) 53.6
1
The numerical results are given for the following example setup: number of array elements (N), 128; number of subarray elements (M),
32; number of subarrays (K), 7; scan angle (), 90

; velocity of sound (c), 1430 m/s; imaging depth (R), 10 cm; and half-wavelength
array spacing (d =
min
/2).
This is the basis for the results presented in Table I.
The SNR of a single point reconstructed from multiple
pulse-echo scans generally is accepted to be:
SNR = 20 log
10
_
N
T
_
N
R
_
+ SNR
0
, (20)
where N
T
is the number of active transmit elements for
each scan, N
R
is the number of receive scans used to con-
struct each image pixel, and SNR
0
is the SNR of the pulse-
echo signal generated by transmitting and receiving on a
single array element. The basis for the equation is that
the total signal power is proportional to the number of
elements ring simultaneously (N
T
), and uncorrelated ad-
ditive noise on receive, reducing the noise by the root of
the number of independent measurements (

N
R
). For a
given ring event in PSA imaging, there are M transmit
elements and M receive elements, resulting in an SNR gain
of 20 log
10
(M

M) for each subarray image. An additional

gain is realized by combining the K subarray images. If all
K subarray images are weighted uniformly, as they are in
PSA-3 [Fig. 5(f)], then the SNR becomes:
SNR
PSA
= 20 log
10
(M

KM) +SNR
0
. (21)
However, in cases in which the subarray images are nonuni-
formly weighted when combined to form the nal image,
the SNR becomes:
SNR
PSA
= 20 log
10
_
M

M
w
k

w
2
k
_
+SNR
0
.
(22)
When uniform weights are used, (22) simplies to (21).
One of the primary advantages of PSA imaging over
FPA imaging is the reduced cost and size of the front-
end hardware. For the example illustrated in Table I, the
FPA front-end requires 128 buers, time-gain compensa-
tion circuits, low-pass lters, and analog-to-digital convert-
ers (ADCs). In contrast, the PSA front-end adds M multi-
plexers (one K : 1 multiplexer for each subarray channel)
and reduces the number of buers, time-gain compensation
(TGC) circuits, low-pass lters, and ADCs to 32. In ad-
dition to the cost savings this represents, the reduction in
size increases the feasibility of incorporating the ADCs into
the transducer head or integrating them with the beam-
former on a single application specic integrated circuit
(ASIC).
Compared to the previous work by Karaman and
ODonnell [40] the method described here has improved
lateral spatial resolution and more closely approximates
phased array imaging using the full array. This can be ob-
served by comparing the coarray of the previous method
shown in Fig. 5(c) to any of the PSA method in Figs. 5(d)
(f). By translating both the transmit and receive subaper-
tures across the full array as in PSA, the FPA response
can be achieved.
There are multiple factors that inuence the motion ar-
tifacts present in a PSA image. First, the order in which
the subarray beams are acquired will aect motion arti-
facts. As illustrated in Fig. 6, all subarrays acquire the
rst beam in the subarray image before acquiring the sec-
ond, and so on. Although it also is possible to acquire
all beams from each subarray consecutively, the order il-
lustrated minimizes the time between acquisitions of the
same beam by dierent subarrays, thus reducing motion
artifacts. Second, the total acquisition time for acquiring
the beams used to form a single PSA image is longer than
that required by FPA imaging. The size of this artifact
depends on the total number of beams acquired to form
a single image, and, therefore, will be less than twice the
size of the FPA artifact (18). Third, application of the in-
48 ieee transactions on ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control, vol. 52, no. 1, january 2005
terpolation lter will inuence motion artifacts. Moving
objects detected by any of the acquired beams used in the
interpolation will eect the reconstructed beam. The im-
pact on the reconstructed beam will depend on both the
number of beams used in the interpolationdetermined
by the interpolation lter lengthand the lter weight
of each beam. In general, beams further from the recon-
structed beam will have less impact due to the sinc-like
nature of the interpolation lter.
VIII. Discussion and Conclusions
The proposed PSA imaging method provides a balance
between conventional FPA imaginghaving a high frame
rate and good SNR but high hardware complexityand
classical synthetic aperture imaginghaving a high frame
rate and low hardware complexity, but with poor SNR.
The PSA imaging signicantly reduces the front-end hard-
ware complexity compared to FPA imaging at the expense
of a slight decrease in frame rate and SNR, in which the
SNR of the proposed method is signicantly higher than
CSA imaging.
The aperture functions for both the subarrays and the
full array were assumed to be uniform with no apodization.
In addition, the subarray spacing was assumed to be half
the subarray size (J = M/2). These two requirements al-
low the full FPA coarray to be a linear combination of the
PSA cosubarrays. Using arbitrary apodization or dierent
subarray spacing requires a more generalized restoration
lter. Methods for calculating such generalized subarray
lters are presented in [50].
One of the most exciting potential applications of the
synthetic aperture and subarray imaging methods is their
application to 3-D imaging using 2-D transducer arrays
[51][53]. By extending the theory presented in this pa-
per to include a 2-D aperture function to form beams in
3-D image space, the channel count can be signicantly
reduced to address the latter limitation.
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Jeremy A. Johnson (S92) received his B.S.
in electrical engineering and a minor in math-
ematics with honors from Walla Walla Col-
lege, College Place, Washington, in 1997. He
received his M.S. and Ph.D. in 1999 and 2003,
respectively, in electrical engineering from
Stanford University, Stanford, California. He
completed the Biodesign Innovation Fellow-
ship at Stanford University in 2004. Jeremy is
a Senior R&D Engineer at Medtronic Vascu-
lar, Santa Rosa, CA.
He has several summers of industry experi-
ence. He worked as a software engineer at Interactive Northwest, Inc.,
Tualatin, OR, during the summer of 1995; worked as an ASIC design
engineer at Intel, Inc., Hillsboro, OR, during the summers of 1996
and 1997; performed research in color science at Sony Research Lab-
oratories, San Jose, CA, during the summer of 1998; performed re-
search in computer vision at Hughes Research Laboratories, Malibu,
CA, during the summer of 1999; and developed an endoscopic cali-
bration routine for image-enhanced endoscopy at Cbyon, Inc., Palo
Alto, CA, during the summer of 2000. His research interests include
medical imaging, computer-aided diagnosis, and surgical navigation
systems.
Mustafa Karaman (S88S89M89M93
M97) was born in Balkesir, Turkey, in 1964.
He received the B.Sc. degree from the Middle
East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey,
and the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from Bilkent
University, Ankara, Turkey, in 1986, 1988, and
1992, respectively, all in electrical and elec-
tronics engineering.
From 1993 to 1994, he was a post-doctoral
fellow in the Biomedical Ultrasonics Labora-
tory in the Bioengineering Department, Uni-
versity of Michigan, Ann Arbor. From 1995
to 1996, he was on the faculty with the Electrical and Electronics
Engineering Department of Krkkale University, Turkey, rst as As-
sistant Professor and later as Associate Professor. In 1996, he joined
Baskent University, Ankara, Turkey, as the Chairman of Electrical
and Electronics Engineering and Acting Chairman of the Computer
Engineering Department and served in founding these departments.
He was a visiting scholar in the Biomedical Ultrasonics Laboratory
at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and in the E. L. Ginzton
Laboratory at Stanford University, Stanford, California, in the sum-
mer terms of 19961997 and 1999, respectively.
Between 20002002, he was with the E. L. Ginzton Laboratory
at Stanford University, Stanford, California, as a visiting faculty in
electrical engineering. In 2002, he joined Isk University, Istanbul,
Turkey, where he is currently working as a faculty member in Elec-
tronics Engineering.
In 1996, he was awarded H. Tugac Foundation Research Award of
Turkish Scientic and Technical Research Council for his contribu-
tions to ultrasonic imaging. His research interests include signal and
image processing, ultrasonic imaging and integrated circuit design.
Dr. Karaman is a member of the IEEE.
Butrus T. Khuri-Yakub (S70S73M76
SM87F95) was born in Beirut, Lebanon.
He received the B.S. degree in 1970 from
the American University of Beirut, Beirut,
Lebanon, the M.S. degree in 1972 from Dart-
mouth College, Hanover, NH, and the Ph.D.
degree in 1975 from Stanford University, Stan-
ford, CA, all in elecrical engineering.
He joined the research sta at the E. L.
Ginzton Laboratory of Stanford University in
1976 as a research associate. He was promoted
to a senior research associate in 1978 and to a
professor of electrical engineering (research) in 1982. He has served on
many university committees in the School of Engineering and the De-
partment of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. Presently,
he is the Deputy Director of the E. L. Ginzton Laboratory.
50 ieee transactions on ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control, vol. 52, no. 1, january 2005
Dr. Khuri-Yakub has been teaching at both the graduate and un-
dergraduate levels for over 15 years. His current research interests
include in situ acoustic sensors (temperature, .1m thickness, resist
cure, etc.) for monitoring and control of integrated circuits manu-
facturing processes, micromaching silicon to make acoustic materials
and devices such as airborne and water immersion ultrasonic trans-
ducers and arrays, and uid ejectors, and in the eld of ultrasonic
nondestructive evaluation and acoustic imaging and microscopy.
Dr. Khuri-Yakub is a fellow of the IEEE, a senior member of the
Acoustic Society of America, and a member of Tau Beta Pi. He is
associate editor of Research in Nondestructive Evaluation, a Journal
of the American Society for Nondestructive Testing. He has authored
over 400 publications and has been principal inventor or coinventor
of 61 issued patents. He received the Stanford University School of
Engineering Distinguished Advisor Award, June 1987, and the Medal
of the City of Bordeaux for contributions to NDE, 1983.