A large aperture row column addressed probe for in vivo 4D ultrafast doppler ultrasound imaging

Four-dimensional (4D) Ultrafast ultrasound imaging was recently proposed to image and quantify blood flow with high sensitivity in 3D as well as anatomical, mechanical or functional information. In 4D Ultrafast imaging, coherent compounding of tilted planes waves emitted by a 2D matrix array were used to image the medium at high volume rate. 4D ultrafast imaging, however, requires a high channel count (>1000) to drive those probes. Alternative approaches have been proposed and investigated to efficiently reduce the density of elements, such as sparse or under-sampled arrays while maintaining a decent image quality and high volume rate. The row–columns configuration presents the advantage of keeping a large active surface with a low amount of elements and a simple geometry. In this study, we investigate the row and column addressed (RCA) approach with the orthogonal plane wave (OPW) compounding strategy using real hardware limitations. We designed and built a large 7 MHz 128  +  128 probe dedicated to vascular imaging and connected to a 256-channel scanner to implement the OPW imaging scheme. Using this strategy, we demonstrate that 4D ultrafast Power Doppler imaging of a large volume of up to depth, both in vitro on flow phantoms and in vivo on the carotid artery of a healthy volunteer at a volume rate of 834 Hz. (paper)