Improvement of tissue harmonic imaging using the pulse-inversion technique.

Harmonic imaging has brought about significant improvements in image quality by taking advantage of the second harmonic component, but it still has one shortcoming, namely, a low signal-to-noise ratio. In this paper, a pulse-inversion technique is used in second harmonic imaging for biologic tissues to increase the signal-to-noise ratio. Enhancement of the second harmonic component is theoretically analyzed based on the theory of the finite amplitude sound wave and confirmed by the measurement. Second harmonic imaging for biologic tissues is constructed with the pulse-inversion technique and compared with the traditional fundamental frequency and also with second harmonic imaging before the use of this technique. Results demonstrate that this technique yields a dramatically cleaner and sharper contrast between the different structures of biologic tissues in ultrasonic images.