Frequency compounding for speckle contrast reduction in phased array images

Frequency compounding is investigated as one technique for reducing the speckle contrast in phased array ultrasonic images. The degree of speckle contrast reduction was found to be inversely proportional to the bandwidth of the transmitted acoustic burst. The speckle pattern was also found to be anisotropic in its response to frequency compounding. Increases in the speckle pattern signal-to-noise ratios of 26 percent were found in B-mode images and increases as high as 84 percent were found in A-mode images.