Abstract:The frame rate of ultrasound imaging, which determines the ability of the system to capture moving objects, is a key factor affecting ultrasound imaging applications, such as 3D imaging, cardiac imaging, color Doppler and so on. Traditional ultrasonic imaging method uses delayed focusing to obtain better image, but has low frame rate. At present, both plane wave imaging method and wide beam imaging method can improve the frame rate. Plane wave imaging is a method that simultaneously transmits or receives ultrasonic waves for all the elements. Although the frame rate was significantly increased with plane wave imaging, the improvement of the resolution is still limited, since it is a non-focusing technology. The image quality is moderate especially when less scan angles were employed to maintain a high frame rate. Wide-beam imaging technology could significantly improve the frame rate, uniformity and spatial resolution of the image by using multi-element simultaneous transmit, far point focusing, dynamic aperture apodization and other methods. This paper acquired data using a research ultrasound system (V1, Verasonics, USA), and reconstructed wide beam image with beamforming. Besides, the paper compared wide beam images with plane-wave image and conventional focused image. Results show that the wide beam method has better axial resolution and lateral resolution compared to plane wave imaging and conventional focused imaging. It also can obtain higher frame rate than the focused imaging.