High quality high frame rate ultrasound imaging with diverging transmit beams

An ultrasound imaging system which produces images of a target region at a high frame rate of display comprising:

• an ultrasound probe comprising an array of transducer elements adapted to transmit different sequences of one or more diverging beams to the target region and to acquire ultrasonic echo signals returned from the target region,
• wherein each sequence of one or more diverging beams is further adapted to acquire a different sub-frame of echo signals as one of a series of different sub-frames from the target region;
• a receiver, coupled to receive the echo signals from each transmission, and adapted to process the echo signals returned from the target region;
• a motion detector, adapted to detect the presence of motion in an image field and to change operation of the imaging system in response thereto, wherein the motion detector is further adapted to detect motion using echo signals received from the transmission of beams dedicated to motion detection;
• sub-frame compounding circuitry, coupled to the receiver, and adapted to coherently compound the echo signals of a series of sub-frames on a spatial basis,
• wherein echo signals of each newly-acquired sub-frame are compounded with echo signals of all of the sub-frames of the current and previously-acquired series except for sub-frames of the previous series which are not different from those of the current series;
• an image processor, coupled to receive the compounded image data, and adapted to produce an ultrasound image;
• and a display adapted to display the ultrasound image,
• wherein the motion detector is further adapted, when receiving echo signals from the beams dedicated to motion detection, to shift a receive aperture in the opposite sense of transmit aperture rotation.