Ultrasonic Synthetic Apertures: Review

2015 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 427-438 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrzej Nowicki ◽  
Barbara Gambin

Abstract In the paper the concept of synthetic aperture used for high resolution/high frame rate ultrasonic imaging is reviewed. The synthetic aperture technique allows building extended “virtual” apertures, synthesized from smaller real aperture resulting in improved lateral resolution along full penetration depth without sacrificing the frame rate. Especially, four methods, synthetic aperture focusing (SAF), multi-element synthetic aperture focusing (M-SAF), synthetic receive aperture (SRA) and synthetic transmit aperture (STA) are addressed. The effective aperture function, describing two-way, far field radiation is a useful tool in beam pattern analysis. Some basic notations, which are used to calculate the effective aperture are introduced in Appendix.

2018 ◽  
Vol 191 ◽  
pp. 00012
Author(s):  
Sofia Rejani ◽  
Abdellatif Khamlichi ◽  
Abdellah El-Hajjaji

One of the challenging problems in non-destructive evaluation is related to identification and sizing of flaws. A high resolution image of the scanned part is required. This allows, through using adequate post-processing of data, to perform localisation and sizing of a flaw. Several techniques have been introduced recently for this purpose. These include among others the synthetic aperture focusing technique, inverse wave-field extrapolation and the total focusing method. However, large uncertainties are affecting the inverse problem solution as provided by these methods when dealing with small defects. It was recognized that reconstruction based on the ultrasonic synthetic aperture focusing technique elaborated in frequency domain provides high resolution imaging even at large distances. This work focused on this promising procedure for the special case of ultrasonic imaging of flaws in 2D elastic medium under plane strain conditions, where the image is provided by a B-scan. Robustness of detection was investigated through perturbing the radargram by white noise and assessed as function of noise energy. It was found that synthetic aperture focusing technique is insensitive to noise.


Author(s):  
N. Bonnet ◽  
M. Troyon ◽  
P. Gallion

Two main problems in high resolution electron microscopy are first, the existence of gaps in the transfer function, and then the difficulty to find complex amplitude of the diffracted wawe from registered intensity. The solution of this second problem is in most cases only intended by the realization of several micrographs in different conditions (defocusing distance, illuminating angle, complementary objective apertures…) which can lead to severe problems of contamination or radiation damage for certain specimens.Fraunhofer holography can in principle solve both problems stated above (1,2). The microscope objective is strongly defocused (far-field region) so that the two diffracted beams do not interfere. The ideal transfer function after reconstruction is then unity and the twin image do not overlap on the reconstructed one.We show some applications of the method and results of preliminary tests.Possible application to the study of cavitiesSmall voids (or gas-filled bubbles) created by irradiation in crystalline materials can be observed near the Scherzer focus, but it is then difficult to extract other informations than the approximated size.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document