US 2011/0213575 A1Published application

Material hardness distribution display system and material hardness distribution display method

AssigneeNihon University

InventorsSadao Omata, Yoshinobu Murayama

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Abstract

A material hardness distribution display system (10) includes a probe unit (20) in which a plurality of probe elements (22) are two-dimensionally arranged. Each of the probe elements (22) has an oscillator (26) for introducing oscillation into a biological tissue and an oscillation detection sensor (28) which detects a reflected wave. The probe elements (22) are successively selected by a switch circuit (50) and connected to a hardness calculation unit (70) and a measurement depth calculation unit (82). The hardness calculation unit (70) executes a frequency component analysis for an incident wave signal to the oscillator (26) and a reflected wave signal from the oscillation detection sensor (28) to calculate the hardness of the biological tissue on the basis of the analysis results. The measurement depth calculation unit (82) calculates a measurement depth inside the biological tissue at a position where the hardness has been measured, on the basis of a temporal position of the incident wave signal and a temporal position of the reflected wave signal. They are correlated to the respective probe elements (22).

Claims8

Dependent claims

A material hardness distribution display system comprising:

an oscillator which introduces a pulse wave into a material to be measured;
an oscillation detection sensor which receives a reflected wave, when the introduced pulse wave is reflected from the material to be measured;
incident wave frequency component analysis means for executing a frequency analysis which breaks down the incident wave into a plurality of sine wave components and cosine wave components, to obtain a spectral distribution of a frequency of each of the sine wave components and a phase obtained from the sine wave component and the cosine wave component at the frequency;
reflected wave frequency component analysis means for executing a frequency analysis which breaks down the reflected wave into a plurality of sine wave components and cosine wave components, to obtain a spectral distribution of a frequency of each of the sine wave components and a phase obtained from the sine wave component and the cosine wave component at the frequency;
frequency phase difference calculation means for comparing the spectral distribution of the incident wave with the spectral distribution of the reflected wave, and calculating, with respect to each of frequencies fx constituting the distributions, a phase difference ex which is a difference between the phase of the incident wave and the phase of the reflected wave at the frequency fx;
hardness calculation means for calculating the hardness of the material to be measured, on the basis of data of a set of the frequency fx and the phase difference θx;
measurement depth calculation means for calculating a measurement depth which is a depth at a position where the hardness has been measured, on the basis of a time of introducing the incident wave and a time of receiving the reflected wave used for the calculation of the hardness;
and
display means for correlating and displaying the hardness and the measurement depth.

6 more elements

A material hardness distribution display method comprising:

an incident wave frequency component analysis step of executing a frequency analysis which breaks down an incident wave introduced as a pulse into a material to be measured by an oscillator into a plurality of sine wave components and cosine wave components, to obtain a spectral distribution of a frequency of each of the sine wave components and a phase obtained from the sine wave component and the cosine wave component at the frequency;
a reflected wave frequency component analysis step of executing a frequency analysis to break down a reflected wave from the material to be measured which is detected by an oscillation detection sensor, into a plurality of sine wave components and cosine wave components, to obtain a spectral distribution of a frequency of each of the sine wave components and a phase obtained from the sine wave component and the cosine wave component at the frequency;
a frequency phase difference calculation step of comparing the spectral distribution of the incident wave with the spectral distribution of the reflected wave, to calculate, with respect to each of frequencies fx constituting the distributions, a phase difference θx which is a difference between the phase of the incident wave and the phase of the reflected wave at the frequency fx;
a hardness calculation step of calculating the hardness of the material to be measured on the basis of data of a set of the frequency fx and the phase difference θx;
a measurement depth calculation step of calculating a measurement depth which is a depth at a position where the hardness has been measured, on the basis of a time of introducing the incident wave and a time of receiving the reflected wave used for the calculation of the hardness;
and
a display step of correlating and displaying the hardness and the depth.

4 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.