Synthetic aperture ultrasound imaging with application to interior pipe inspection

Abstract

This thesis is concerned with synthetic aperture focusing of ultrasonic pulse-echo measurements, with application to multilayered media and cylindrical structures. The work is motivated by the need for accurate methods for non-destructive testing of pipelines, particularly water distribution pipelines. By improving the lateral resolution in ultrasonic measurements, the synthetic aperture algorithms presented in the thesis enable accurate detection and sizing of corrosion damage, holes, and other pipe defects.

In ultrasonic inspection of water-filled pipelines, the water and the pipe wall constitute a multilayered structure, and multilayer synthetic aperture algorithms are therefore needed. We present a number of such multilayer algorithms, formulated in both the time and Fourier domains, and show that the Fourier-domain algorithms generally require a significantly lower processing time. An algorithm combining two algorithms used in reflection seismology is shown to require the least processing time for large data sets.

When the synthetic aperture is created by scanning over a straight line or a flat plane, and the propagating medium is homogeneous, the lateral resolution after focusing is approximately half the transducer diameter. We show that this resolution limit also applies in the multilayer case, for both two- and three-dimensional imaging, as long as the transducer beam is relatively narrow.

Ultrasonic measurements for pipe inspection are usually performed over a cylindrical surface. We develop a new synthetic aperture algorithm, termed cylindrical phase shift migration, to focus such scans. The algorithm is applicable to concentrically layered media, and thus enables full volumetric synthetic aperture imaging in pipes and similar structures. It is shown that the lateral resolution along the cylinder axis is approximately half the transducer diameter, and that the angular resolution is approximately D/(2R), where D denotes transducer diameter and R denotes scan radius. The algorithm is also adapted for use with focused transducers, and it is shown that it significantly extends the range within which the transducer yields a high lateral resolution.