1. A method of probing a material under investigation comprising the steps of: using a plurality of transducers to transmit an ultrasound beam into the material under investigation, the ultrasound beam including components generated by each transducer in the plurality of transducers; receiving echoes generated by interactions between the ultrasound beam and the material under investigation; generating first data from the received echoes, the first data having values that include phase and magnitude information and being associatable with a time dimension and distributed over at least one spatial dimension; using the phase or magnitude information to distinguish echoes, among the received echoes, resulting from ultrasound beam components generated by a subset of transducers in the plurality of transducers; and transforming the first data into second data using the distinguished echoes, the second data having values distributed over at least one more spatial dimension than the first data.