Delay-and-sum beamformation (DAS), i.e., back-projection is the most common PAI image reconstruction algorithm. Here we propose a novel PAI image reconstruction technique – hyper-beamformation (HBF), which reaches significantly low sidelobes compared with DAS, outperforms delay-multiply-and-sum (DMAS) with lower complexity, and offers tunability on lateral resolution, precision, and contrast. Via the subtraction of the beam-pattern difference of the left and right sub-arrays from their beam-pattern sum, a hyper beam with narrow mainlobe, low sidelobes, and suppressed grating-lobe artifact can be obtained. Experimental results show that our proposed HBF has significant improvement on precision and contrast.
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