DESCRIPTION CONTINUED:  This additional gain helps to combat some of the extra signal loss. In many cases this alone will not be sufficient and it will also be necessary to reduce the working frequency. To compensate for the associated loss of resolution, QinetiQ has employed a new super-resolution processing technique that gives a dramatic times two improvement in the lateral resolution. The resolution of an ultrasound image is different in the top-to-bottom (range) direction and the side-to-side (lateral) direction. The range resolution is set by the pulse length (or bandwidth) and remains substantially constant over the image. The lateral resolution gets worse with range. At the maximum depth a typical image may be observed to be made up of short horizontal lines. The new technique reduces the length of these lines by a factor of two.
The result of this combined approach to the problem is a system that gives deeper, sharper ultrasound images than ever before.