An ultrasound imaging system for imaging soft tissue through bone matter of a subject. The imaging system transmits ultrasound waves via an ultrasound probe toward the subject's bone material at a plurality of incidence angles so that ultrasound waves may pass through and reflect back through bone as both longitudinal and shear waves, which are all used in combination for imaging. The system includes a switch to connect the transducer elements to a commercially available ultrasound driving system, which allow the imaging system to utilize an ultrasound driving system which has fewer electrical transmit/receive channels than the ultrasound probe. The host controller processes the received ultrasound signals to form an image of the subject's soft tissue through matter. The image reconstruction method, along with tracking information, allows the creation of whole-brain two-dimensional, 2D orthogonal, or three-dimensional images, as well as time lapse four-dimensional or tomographical ultrasound images.
