Acoustic Hole-Hologram for Ultrasonic Focusing With High Sensitivity

Acoustic hologram enable the capability in the acoustic pattern control and drive many applications of ultrasound. However, hologram has not been applied to ultrasound imaging because the medical application of acoustic holograms is limited owing to the sound reflection and scattering at the acoustic holographic surface and its internal attenuation. In this study, we propose an acoustic holographic computing method and present a disc-shaped hologram with a central hole comparing with a conventional hologram using the iterative angular spectrum approach. The results show that the transducer with hole hologram achieves the required focusing effect with the full width at half maximum about $1.5\lambda $ , high sensitivity increased by 92.7%, and a low two-way insertion loss with −15.8 dB compared to conventional hologram. Pulse-echo and ultrasonic imaging are achieved by a transducer with two holograms which shows new applications of acoustic hologram in ultrasound.