Optimization of F-number in synthetic aperture imaging with multi-element circular array
The use of circular array in ultrasonic computed tomography(USCT)has shown significant potential for imaging breast tissue and industrial nondestructive testing,but there are still challenges in image reconstruction quality.This study proposes applying the F-number in multi-element synthetic aperture focusing synthetic aperture focusing methods,enabling automatic scanning of targets with the ring array and exploring the impact of the F-number on ring array synthetic aperture imaging.Through simulations and experiments using a breast phantom model and 0.3 mm diameter nylon threads as test objects,image reconstruction was performed with transmit and receive F-numbers set to F、F/2、F/4、F/8、F/16 followed by automatic threshold segmentation and full width at half maximum(FWHM)analysis.The results show that a lower receive F-number significantly reduces target distortion and improves imaging accuracy,with a 28.3%reduction in reconstructed image size error.For point targets,a lower receive F-number significantly enhances spatial resolution,with axial resolution improved by 40%and lateral resolution by 36.7%.This study provides new insights and methods for improving the imaging performance of ring array USCT.