3-D Synthetic Aperture High Volume Rate Tensor Velocity Imaging Using 1024 Element Matrix Probe

Tensor velocity imaging (TVI) in a 3-D volume is investigated through simulations and experiments conducted using a Vermon 3 MHz 1024 element phased array (Vermon S.A., Tours, France) along with the experimental scanner SARUS. The flow-rig with a parabolic flow profile was positioned along the x direction.

The data is acquired by a recursive interleaved synthetic aperture sequence with 5 emissions at a pulse repetition frequency of 5 kHz to produce estimates at a volume rate of 500 Hz. A directional transverse oscillations velocity estimator based on cross-correlation is used to estimate the velocity components in the three Cartesian directions.

The simulations were performed at peak velocities (vp) from 0.1 m/s to 1 m/s. At vp = 1 m/s, the estimates were achieved with relative mean bias (RB) less than -13.3% and relative mean standard deviation (RSD) less than 5%. The experiments were conducted at a vp of 0.25 m/s, and the estimates for (vx ,vy ,vz ) were obtained with RBs of (5.35, 3.02, 1.00)% and RSDs of (5.03, 4.87, 1.27)%.