would be of significant interest because it provides valuable information for diagnosis, prognosis, and therapy of a patient [5]. Among all the methods to quantify arterial stiffness, the European Society of Cardiology has recommended to use the carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (PWV) as a favored measure of aortic stiffness [5]. However, this is a global measure of arterial stiffness, in which local plaque stiffness plays no role. Assessment of arterial stiffness by imaging the local propagation of pulse waves can identify plaque characteristics, especially in the carotid arteries [6; 7; 8], which are prone to plaque development associated with stroke [9]. Pulse wave imaging (PWI) is usually conducted based on two-dimensional (2D) images of the pulse wave propagation [10; 11; 12]. However, it is a 3D phenomenon, and elasticity of the carotid artery varies in different locations [6; 13]. Consequently, 2D images impose limitations. First, 2D elastography is sensitive to out-of-plane motion of the object, which can occur in carotid imaging [14]. Moreover, with conventional 2D ultrasound imaging, it is assumed that the propagation of the pulse wave is parallel to the imaging plane, which results in inaccuracies in PWV estimation [13]. A 3D assessment could be based on multiple cross-sectional 2D images of the 3D vessel structure, but it requires reproduction of the same imaging planes at later times, which is difficult [15]. Thus, it would be of great importance to have a comprehensive view of the arterial walls and generate a 3D elasticity map [13]. Going from 2D to 3D ultrasound imaging is challenging, and specific limitations are imposed, depending on the application [16; 17]. One approach is to mechanically sweep the conventional one-dimensional (1D) linear or phased array probes (used in 2D imaging) by a motorized system to acquire a 3D dataset [18; 19; 20]. With this approach, a low volume rate along with large errors due to motion artifacts is obtained. Free-hand scanning techniques, in which a position and orientation sensor is added to the conventional 1D array transducer to record the trajectory and orientation, can be used to address the motion artifacts [18; 21; 22]. Still, a poor out-of-plane spatial resolution and a low volume rate limit the use of the mechanical scanning approach for applications such as echocardiography, where motion needs to be accurately tracked [15]. Another approach for 3D imaging is to make a 2D matrix array [23]. With a 2D array, the transducer can remain stationary, and electronic scanning can be used to sweep the ultrasound beam over the entire volume under examination [15], which can overcome the frame rate limitation. However, the fabrication and implementation of 2D matrix transducers are challenging. A large 2D transducer is required to obtain a high elevation and azimuth resolution. On the other hand, the element pitch should preferably be kept below half a wavelength (\(\lambda\)) in both directions to avoid grating lobes [24]. The combination of small elements and a large aperture results in a very large number of transducer elements. It is fairly possible to make a matrix array with \(>\)1000 elements, but making electrical connections to all the elements is challenging [25]. To realize a fully populated matrix transducer that uses a reduced number of channels, different approaches have been proposed. The signals from the elements in an aperture can be locally beamformed to obtain one output receive signal [26; 27; 28; 29]. With the row-column addressed array approach, the number of channels required is reduced from N\({}^{2}\) to 2N, where N is the number of elements in each direction of a square matrix array, at the cost of image contrast and resolution [30; 31; 32]. Channel multiplexing is another approach to combine the data from several receive elements into one output line, at the cost of frame rate reduction [33].