Patent ID: 7867166

Claim:
A method for estimating an aberration in propagation of an ultrasonic wave from an aperture through an aberration path, using a transducer array comprising a plurality of elements, the method comprising: (a) illuminating a group of sample volumes of random media to produce scattered signals and receiving the scattered signals at each of the elements in the transducer array; (b) computing a power spectrum estimate at each of the elements in the transducer array by using the scattered signals received in step (a) for all of the elements in the transducer array; (c) estimating a magnitude of a frequency-domain aberration factor at each of the elements of the transducer array by normalizing the power spectrum computed in step (b); (d) estimating a phase of the frequency-domain aberration factor at each of the elements of the transducer array by taking cross-spectral estimates and calculating phase differences from the cross-spectral estimates; and (e) estimating the aberration from the magnitude estimated in step (c) and the phase estimated in step (d).