Ultra-High Frame Rate Imaging with Plane Wave Technology

Why use the Vantage system for ultra-high-speed imaging?

  • Since 2009, Verasonics has been providing the benchmark research system for plane wave imaging and ultra-high speed ultrasonics imaging. There are more than 1000 research papers published on these topics using Vantage systems. Selected publications can be accessed here.

  • The Vantage platform is a generalized ultra-high-speed imaging platform that combines ultra-high-speed frame rate data acquisition (up to 100,000 FPS), ultra-high-speed data transfer (up to 6.6 GB/s sustained) and ultra-high-speed image reconstruction (on the order of 40 million pixels/s).

  • Ultra-high-speed imaging can be achieved on Vantage using unfocused beams of all types, including plane waves, diverging waves, weakly focused beams or other suitable arbitrary wavefronts.

  • These ultra-high-speed frame rates enable high-resolution inspection during fabrication processes without the need to compromise line speed. Conversely, for a given line speed, the acquisition and imaging speed of Vantage enables higher-resolution, higher-sensitivity inspection than is achievable using other systems.

  • Ultra-high-speed imaging allows high resolution imaging to be used to achieve effective temporal sampling of slower time-scale dynamic processes within a material, opening up new potential fields of study.

What is Plane Wave Imaging, or PWI?

Plane waves, or emissions with a flat wavefront, can ensonify the entire field of view and thus maximize the frame rate for phased array imaging. A single plane wave produces an image by focusing only the received backscattered signal retrospectively at a number of pixel locations. In other words, one image can be acquired within a single transmit and receive cycle, though at the expense of increased sidelobes over that achievable with scanline imaging. Plane wave emissions are a special case of unfocused beam transmissions.

The figure above shows an example of how high-speed imaging with the Vantage system may be used to study the vibrational dynamics of cracks.  By imaging using a stroboscopic approach with an effective frame rate of 180,000 fps, the real-time dynamic influence of modulating a fatigue crack with a 6.35 kHz elastic wave is observed.
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NDE/NDT Applications & Techniques
NDE/NDT with Vantage