Potential of coded excitation in medical ultrasound imaging

Improvement in signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and/or penetration depth can be achieved in medical ultrasound by using long coded waveforms, in a similar manner as in radars or sonars. However, the time-bandwidth product (TB) improvement, and thereby SNR improvement is considerably lower in medical ultrasound, due to the lower available bandwidth. There is still space for about 20 dB improvement in the SNR, which will yield a penetration depth up to 20 cm at 5 MHz [M. O'Donnell, IEEE Trans. Ultrason. Ferroelectr. Freq. Contr., 39(3) (1992) 341]. The limited TB additionally yields unacceptably high range sidelobes. However, the frequency weighting from the ultrasonic transducer's bandwidth, although suboptimal, can be beneficial in sidelobe reduction. The purpose of this study is an experimental evaluation of the above considerations in a coded excitation ultrasound system. A coded excitation system based on a modified commercial scanner is presented. A predistorted FM signal is proposed in order to keep the resulting range sidelobes at acceptably low levels. The effect of the transducer is taken into account in the design of the compression filter. Intensity levels have been considered and simulations on the expected improvement in SNR are also presented. Images of a wire phantom and clinical images have been taken with the coded system. The images show a significant improvement in penetration depth and they preserve both axial resolution and contrast.     

Influence of the ultrasound transducer bandwidth on selection of the complementary Golay bit code length

In contrast to previously published papers [A. Nowicki, Z. Klimonda, M. Lewandowski, J. Litniewski, P.A. Lewin, I. Trots, Comparison of sound fields generated by different coded excitations – Experimental results, Ultrasonics 44 (1) (2006) 121–129; J. Litniewski, A. Nowicki, Z. Klimonda, M. Lewandowski, Sound fields for coded excitations in water and tissue: experimental approach, Ultrasound Med. Biol. 33 (4) (2007) 601–607], which examined the factors influencing the spatial resolution of coded complementary Golay sequences (CGS), this paper investigates the effect of ultrasound imaging transducer’s fractional bandwidth on the gain of the compressed echo signal for different spectral widths of the CGS. Two different bit lengths were considered, specifically one and two cycles. Three transducers having fractional bandwidth of 25%, 58% and 80% and operating at frequencies 6, 4.4 and 6 MHz, respectively were examined (one of the 6 MHz sources was focused and made of composite material). The experimental results have shown that by increasing the code length, i.e. decreasing the bandwidth, the compressed echo amplitude could be enhanced. The smaller the bandwidth was the larger was the gain; the pulse-echo sensitivity of the echo amplitude increased by 1.88, 1.62 and 1.47, for 25%, 58% and 80% bandwidths, respectively. These results indicate that two cycles bit length excitation is more suitable for use with bandwidth limited commercially available imaging transducers. Further, the time resolution is retained for transducers with two cycles excitation providing the fractional bandwidth is lower than approximately 90%. The results of this work also show that adjusting the code length allows signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) to be enhanced while using limited (less that 80%) bandwidth imaging transducers. Also, for such bandwidth limited transducers two cycles excitation would not decrease the time resolution, obtained with “conventional” spike excitation. Hence, CGS excitation could be successfully implemented with the existing, relatively narrow band imaging transducers without the need to use usually more expensive wideband, composite ones.     

Parameter optimization of pulse compression in ultrasound imaging systems with coded excitation

A linear array imaging system with coded excitation is considered, where the proposed excitation/compression scheme maximizes the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and minimizes sidelobes at the output of the compression filter. A pulse with linear frequency modulation (LFM) is used for coded excitation. The excitation/compression scheme is based on the fast digital mismatched filtering. The parameter optimization of the excitation/compression scheme includes (i) choice of an optimal filtering function for the mismatched filtering; (ii) choice of an optimal window function for tapering of the chirp amplitude; (iii) optimization of a chirp-to-transducer bandwidth ratio; (iv) choice of an appropriate n-bit quantizer. The simulation results show that the excitation/compression scheme can be implemented as a Dolph–Chebyshev filter including amplitude tapering of the chirp with a Lanczos window. An example of such an optimized system is given where the chirp bandwidth is chosen to be 2.5 times the transducer bandwidth and equals 6 MHz: The sidelobes are suppressed to −80 dB, for a central frequency of 4 MHz, and to −94 dB, for a central frequency of 8 MHz. The corresponding improvement of the SNR is 18 and 21 dB, respectively, when compared to a conventional short pulse imaging system. Simulation of B-mode images demonstrates the advantage of coded excitation systems of detecting regions with low contrast.     

超声换能器对线性调频信号脉冲压缩性能的影响分析*

该文研究了不同编码带宽下超声换能器对编码信号脉冲压缩后信噪比与轴向分辨率的影响关系。将脉冲压缩后的时域峰值转化为频域积分的形式,得到考虑换能器影响的脉冲压缩信噪比公式。以线性调频信号为例,仿真与实验结果表明,编码激励相对于方波激励的信噪比增益随编码带宽的减小而增大,因为受换能器带宽限制,编码激励的轴向分辨率随编码带宽的增大先减小后趋于稳定。该研究为编码激励方法更有效地应用于超声检测的背景中提供了参考。     

激光带宽抑制光束小尺度自聚焦效应的条件

激光带宽有利于抑制光束的小尺度自聚焦效应,从而突破非线性效应的限制提高高能固体激光器的输出功率。研究表明,带宽抑制小尺度自聚焦效应的程度与带宽和脉宽之比密切相关,相同脉宽条件下带宽越大对空间小尺度自聚焦的抑制作用越明显,而带宽一定时随着脉冲宽度的增大,带宽的抑制作用则逐渐变弱。在实际的钕玻璃激光放大系统中,由有限的增益带宽以及增益窄化等因素所限制的带宽量,决定了在这类固体激光系统中需要脉冲宽度短至皮秒量级才能有效利用激光带宽抑制小尺度自聚焦效应,而对于长至数十皮秒,甚至纳秒量级的长脉冲而言,如此有限的带宽量对小尺度自聚焦的抑制几乎不起作用。     

Multi-channel magnetic resonance spectroscopy through time domain multiplexing

Time domain multiplexing (TDM) is presented as a viable approach to increasing the sensitivity and efficiency of magnetic resonance spectroscopic (MRS) experiments through multi-channel signal acquisition. By switching very rapidly between coils of a receive phased array, TDM receiver extensions allow the acquisition of multiple, independent spectra through a single channel magnetic resonance console. A TDM receiver extension designed for imaging and spectroscopy is described, and the impact of this hardware extension on the processing and quantitation of MRS data is addressed. The primary complication involves the use of fixed bandwidth RF band-pass filters that can not be adjusted to match the spectral width of the desired MRS experiment.MRS sequences whose bandwidths are narrower than the bandwidth provided by TDM band-pass filters can be acquired through TDM with minimal loss of SNR as long as two constraints are met. The first constraint requires that the entire bandwidth of the band-pass filters be sampled at or more rapidly than the Nyquist rate associated with their bandwidth, to prevent extra noise from aliasing into the final spectrum. The second requirement is that spectral resolution be held constant to that of the desired experiment.Results from a two-channel multiplexed MRS experiment, conducted according to these guidelines, illustrate that TDM can be used to allow acquisition of multi-channel MRS experiments through single channel console systems with a minimal loss in SNR.     

Time-frequency Wiener filtering for structural noise reduction

In order to enhance the defect in relation to background noise of large grained materials different algorithms have been developed. Wiener filtering techniques have proved to be efficient for the SNR enhancement of ultrasonic signals coming from highly scattering materials. These processing algorithms are based on designing a filter that has large gain at frequencies where the SNR is high and low gain at frequencies where SNR is small. However, this technique does not consider two important ultrasonic effects: the finite-time duration of the flaw UT signal coming from a defect and the distortion of the frequency components of the traveling wave-front due to the dispersion. In this work, a time-frequency Wiener filter is proposed that takes into account these two characteristics. Experimental results are presented, showing that the proposed time-frequency algorithm has an excellent performance on SNR enhancement.     

Covert underwater acoustic communications

Low probability of detection (LPD) communications are conducted at a low received signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) to deter eavesdroppers to sense the presence of the transmitted signal. Successful detection at intended receiver heavily relies on the processing gain achieved by employing the direct-sequence spread-spectrum (DSSS) technique. For scenarios that lack a sufficiently low SNR to maintain LPD, another metric, referred to as low probability of interception (LPI), is of interest to protect the privacy of the transmitted information. If covert communications take place in underwater acoustic (UWA) environments, then additional challenges are present. The time-varying nature of the UWA channel prevents the employment of a long spreading waveform. Furthermore, UWA environments are frequency-selective channels with long memory, which imposes challenges to the design of the spreading waveform. In this paper, a covert UWA communication system that adopts the DSSS technique and a coherent RAKE receiver is investigated. Emphasis is placed on the design of a spreading waveform that not only accounts for the transceiver structure and frequency-selective nature of the UWA channel, but also possesses a superior LPI. The proposed techniques are evaluated using both simulated and SPACE'08 in-water experimental data.     

A fast circuit for polarizing Langmuir probes

A circuit that has been designed and tested for polarizing electrostatic Langmuir probes in a multifilament plasma device (MPD) is described. The circuit provides a sawtooth waveform whose duration ranges between 40 and 600 μs, and repetition rate ranges between 140 and 1400 Hz. Output voltage swings up to +32 V with a load current of 2 A. The main advantages of the proposed circuit, compared with similar ones, are: better slew rate, larger bandwidth, higher output current, thermal and short-circuit protection, low cost, and ease of construction     

Switchable down-, up- and dual-chirped microwave waveform generation with improved time-bandwidth product based on polarization modulation and phase encoding

A switchable down-, up- and dual-chirped microwave waveform generation technique with improved time-bandwidth product (TBWP) is proposed and demonstrated based on a dual-polarization dual-parallel Mach-Zehnder modulator (DP-DPMZM) cascaded with a polarization modulator (PolM). By properly controlling the phase shifts of the radio frequency signals applied to the DP-DPMZM, switchable down-, up- and dual-chirped waveforms with simultaneous frequency and bandwidth doubling can be generated. To enlarge the TBWP further, splitting parabolic signal and phase-encoding splitting parabolic signal are used to drive the PolM for the enhancement of bandwidth and time duration. Numerical results demonstrate the generation of down-, up- and dual-chirped microwave waveform with TBWP of 8, 160 and 10240. The proposed method may find applications in future multifunction radar systems due to the high performance and flexibility.     

Improved Broadband Inversion Performance for NMR in Liquids

New NMR broadband inversion pulses that compensate both for resonance offset and radiofrequency (RF) inhomogeneity are described. The approach described is a straightforward computer optimization of an initial digitized waveform generated from either a constant-amplitude frequency sweep or from an existing composite inversion pulse. Problems with convergence to local minima are alleviated by the way the optimization is carried out. For a given duration and maximum allowable RF field strength B₁ (but not necessarily given RMS power deposition), the resultant broadband inversion pulse (BIP) shows superior inversion compared to inversion pulses obtained from previous methods, including adiabatic inversion pulses. Any existing BIP can be systematically elaborated to build up longer inversion pulses that perform over larger and larger bandwidths. The resulting pulse need not be adiabatic throughout its duration or across the entire operational bandwidth.     

Restriction of shot noise and material noise in a multilevel photochromic memory on signal-to-noise ratio

The recording density of multilevel photochromic memory is limited by the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the readout signal. In this paper, shot noise and material noise are investigated through theoretical analysis of SNR. When the bandwidth of a system is less than 1MHz, the material noise takes a prominent position; when the bandwidth of the system is more than 10MHz, the shot noise becomes dominant. The thickness of recording layer can be optimized to maximize the SNR and reduce the influence of the bandwidth of the system on SNR.     

基于几何相移模型的双线列阵左右舷分辨技术研究

针对双线列阵克服左右舷模糊问题，将双线列阵认为是由两两阵元为一组的偶极子构成的单线列阵，利用几何相移模型对目标进行左右舷分辨，经过理论分析、仿真实验和湖试实验，指出丁几何相移模型不仅能解决单频情况下的左右舷模糊问题，而且还能解决信号带宽不太宽情况下究竟能到多大相对带宽，取决于所设定的左右舷分辨增益门限)的左右舷模糊问题。该方法经湖试实验得到了很好的验证：在信噪比为5dB时，采用该方法处理时，左右舷分辨差超过7dB。在本文设定的高信噪比条件下，证明了几何相移模型的双线列阵左右舷分辨技术是有效的、可行的。     

Performance of GPRML-AR system in perpendicular magnetic recording channel with thermal decay

The bit-error rate (BER) performance of the generalized partial response maximum likelihood with autoregressive (GPRML-AR) channel model system in perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) channel with thermal decay is obtained. The 128/130(0,16/8) run-length-limited (RLL) code is used as a recording code. The GPR channel consists of the PR1 channel followed by the reduction circuit of predicted noise. The BER performance is evaluated by computer simulation using a thermal decay model. The model has been obtained by using an approximate equation that represents amplitude degradation of the reproducing waveform with elapsed time based on the experimental data for CoPtCr-SiO₂ PMR media. The Viterbi detector with an AR channel model is employed. Furthermore, long-term degradation of the required SNR to achieve a BER of 10⁻⁴ with elapsed time is obtained and the performance is compared with that of PR1ML system. The results show that the poorer the thermal stability of the medium becomes, the larger the SNR gain of the GPR1ML-AR system over the PR1ML system becomes. The SNR gain also increases with elapsed time.     

机载多脉冲激光雷达目标信号模拟器的研究

研究多脉冲激光雷达目标信号模拟器,用以评估回波数字信号处理算法及其实现平台的性能。结合信号能量与波形关系指出由激光雷达方程建立回波信号波形模型是不充分的。对空中目标回波脉冲展宽进行建模及数值仿真,得到不同倾角、目标距离及目标尺寸下的波形展宽时间数据。根据展宽前后能量保持不变的性质,利用高斯脉冲函数特征参数求解建立回波波形数学模型。基于目标距离误差及目标回波噪声统计特性建立回波仿真模型,提出了依信噪比发生回波观测信号的方法。对比两种模拟器的信噪比误差、最小模拟信噪比、连续工作时间等性能指标,总结了新型模拟器的优势。     

非共线相位匹配LBO晶体飞秒光参变放大器的研究

对非共线相位匹配LBO晶体飞秒光参变放大器进行了系统地分析和理论研究，用数值方法得出了非共线角、相位匹配角、增益和增益带宽之间的关系，给出了放大器设计的各种最优化参量。研究结果表明，这种参变放大器不仅可以实现较高的参变增益和获得极宽的增益带宽，还具有较大的参变允许角、较小的走离角和小的群速色散。因此这种参变放大器对于以纳秒级高功率激光作为抽运光，利用光参变啁啾脉冲放大（OPCPA）技术高效率参变放大飞秒脉冲产生10^12W甚至10^15W级的超强超短激光脉冲具有重要的意义。建立的理论模型具有普遍意义，也为其他类似的参变过程提供了重要的理论依据。     

有源循环式光脉冲复制系统的输出特性研究

改进并验证了一种基于有源循环光纤延迟线的模拟光脉冲信号复制技术.实验系统采用低增益掺铒光纤放大器补偿循环损耗.进行了光脉冲信号复制的仿真和实验,在掺铒光纤放大器增益为6.774 dB,光滤波器－3 dB,带宽为0.8 nm时,测得第500个复制光脉冲的信噪比为31 dB.仿真和实验结果表明,选用小增益掺铒光纤放大器可以实现低于3 dB的噪音系数,降低掺铒光纤放大器的放大自发辐射噪音并提高输出脉冲序列的信噪比,有望成为提高光脉冲复制器性能的一种新方法.在系统中插入窄带光滤波器等手段也是改善信噪比的有效措施.     

数字式超声内窥成像系统

介绍了一种采用前置微型电机的新型推拉式超声内窥镜的研制方法.在该内镜系统中,采用FPGA实现成像处理功能,运用编码激励技术以提高系统的信噪比和探测深度,使用了微型前置探头取代了目前商用超声内镜中所采用的钢丝连接以驱动换能器进行旋转扫描.该仪器在300 h的连续工作测试中能够正常运行.相较模拟成像系统,数字系统将模数转换置于信号处理的最前端,从而能够保留回声的更多信息.这使得编码激励、数字式正交解调系统获得更高的成像质量.将电机前置于探头附近,能够较外部导线牵引旋转方式获得更大的旋转稳定性、更高的超声图像质量和更长的使用寿命.     

Limitation in the intrinsic method of EDFA gain optimization for 32 × 40 Gbit/s WDM systems

The gain flattening of the erbium doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) is one of the most important aspects in the EDFA which the gain is wavelength dependent. For the first time the limitation of EDFA gain optimizing for a 32-channel wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) systems is investigated and reported in this paper. In a 32-channel WDM system the most favorable flatness gain achieved was 23.16 ± 1.51 dB with an average noise figure of 5.70 dB. This outcome proposes that the method does not achieve a uniform spectral gain in a 32-channel WDM system that incorporates a bandwidth of around 25 nm. Based on the simulation results the intrinsic optimization of EDFA causes the poor SNR and peak signal power with great variation over a transmission distance of 480 km single mode fiber.     

数字式超声内窥成像系统(英文)

The development of a novel push-type ultrasonic endoscope is described in which probe rotation is accomplished by a small motor situated near the transducer. A digital FPGA-based ultrasound imaging system is implemented which uses coded excitation to increase the SNR and penetration depth, with probe rotation accomplished by a small motor situated near the transducer replacing the external motor and the long steel wire used in other ultrasonic endoscopes. The apparatus is tested continuously for 300 hours with no obvious problems. The coded excitation, digital quadrature demodulation imaging system can obtain ultrasonic images of higher quality and more information of the echo is preserved compared with the analog imaging system, because the analog digital conversion is moved to the first step of the signal processing.The digital imaging system possesses a higher SNR resulting in a sharp image. Locating the motor near the probe improves the consistency of rotational speed in comparison with external guide-wire rotation, and increases the image quality and life-span of these devices.