Ultrasound imaging apparatus and method for controlling the same
AssigneeSamsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
InventorsKyuhong Kim, Youngihn Kho, Baehyung Kim, Suhyun Park, Jongkeun Song
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Abstract
An ultrasound imaging apparatus includes an ultrasonic probe configured to transmit an ultrasound to an object, receive an echo signal reflected from the object, and output the echo signal; a quality determiner configured to receive the echo signals and determine quality of voxels of a three-dimensional (3D) volume of the object to be rendered based on observation information of the 3D volume; and a beamformer configured to perform beamforming on the echo signal based on the quality of the voxels to generate an output signal.
Claims16
An ultrasound imaging apparatus comprising:
- an ultrasonic probe configured to transmit an ultrasound to an object, receive an echo signal reflected from the object, and output the echo signal;
- a quality determiner, implemented by at least one processor, configured to receive the echo signal and determine quality of voxels of a three-dimensional (3D) volume of the object to be rendered based on a distance between each of the voxels and an observation center of the 3D volume;
- and
- a beamformer, implemented by the at least one processor, configured to control beamforming differently on the echo signal based on the quality of the voxels to generate an output signal,
- wherein the quality determiner is configured to determine a first voxel having a first distance to the observation center shorter than a first threshold to have highest quality, determine a second voxel having a second distance to the observation center equal to or longer than a second threshold to have a lowest quality,
- wherein the beamformer is configured to perform the beamforming such that the first voxel having the highest quality has a highest resolution and the second voxel having the lowest quality has a lowest resolution, and
- wherein the quality determiner is configured to determine a voxel corresponding to a center among voxels most adjacent to the ultrasonic probe in a probing direction of the ultrasonic probe as the observation center.
A method for controlling an ultrasound imaging apparatus, the method comprising:
- obtaining a distance between an observation center and each of voxels of a three-dimensional (3D) volume of an object to be rendered;
- and
- determining quality of the voxels of the 3D volume based on the distance;
- and
- performing beamforming differently on the voxels based on the determined quality,
- wherein the determining quality of the voxels of the 3D volume based on the distance comprises:
- determining a voxel corresponding to a center among voxels most adjacent to an ultrasonic probe in a probing direction of the ultrasonic probe as the observation center,
- determining a first voxel having a first distance to the observation center shorter than a first threshold to have highest quality, and
- determining a second voxel having a second distance to the observation center equal to or longer than a second threshold to have lowest quality, and
- wherein the performing beamforming differently on the voxels based on the determined quality comprises performing beamforming such that the first voxel having the highest quality has a highest resolution and the second voxel having the lowest quality has a lowest resolution.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.