Comparison of high‐frame rate and delay‐and‐sum imaging methods

Recently, a high‐frame rate imaging method has been developed with limited diffraction beams to construct either two‐dimensional (2‐D) or three‐dimensional (3‐D) images (up to 3750 frames or volumes/s for biological soft tissues at a depth of about 200 mm). In this talk, the new method is compared with the conventional delay‐and‐sum (dynamic focusing) method. Both computer simulation and experiment results show that the quality of images constructed with the two methods are virtually identical when the maximum Axicon angle of X waves in the high‐frame rate method is approaching to 90 degrees. Theoretical analysis is carried out to confirm the results. This is significant because the high‐frame rate method requires thousands of times less computations while achieving the same high‐imaging quality as the conventional delay‐and‐sum method. [This work was supported in part by grant HL 60301 from the National Institutes of Health.]