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AssigneeSonicaid Limited
InventorsThomas Graham Brown, Damir Josip Miroslav Skrgatic, Graeme William Younger, John Cook Fortune
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The invention relates to apparatus for generating electrical signals representing the instantaneous position and attitude of an object with reference to a coordinate system. A pair of wave transmitters are mounted and controlled so that they follow any movement of the object and are arranged to transmit ultrasonic pulses to three planar transducers arranged to convert the received energy into signals representative of the instantaneous position and attitude of the two transmitters relative to the three transducers. The invention is particularly applicable to apparatus for the ultrasonic examination of bodies having non-planar surfaces and in this case the object referred to is the ultrasonic probe designed to transmit wave energy into the body. The probe may be mounted with one or two degrees of rotational freedom on a boom which is itself mounted with at least two degrees of rotational freedom on a vertical column. The echoes received from the body may be used to modulate the beam of a cathode-ray tube display system, while the electrical signals from the three transducers are used to deflect the cathode-ray beam. The signals are passed through a display selection system and possibly through one or more coordinate transformation networks. In the simplest case, the display selection system selects the signals relating to two axes and displays these signals as viewed along the third axis of the coordinate system.
Apparatus for the ultrasonic examination of bodies having non-planar surfaces, including a longitudinally extending probe which directs a beam of ultrasonic pulses into the body and receives reflected pulses from the body, wherein the probe is mounted on a boom so that it is pivotable about first and second mutually perpendicular axes fixed in the boom, said boom being mounted on a column so that it is pivotable about a third axis perpendicular to the axis of the boom and a fourth axis perpendicular to said third axis, said third and fourth axes being fixed in the column, wherein means are provided to produce electrical signals defining the instantaneous position of a point on the longitudinal axis of the probe and the instantaneous attitude of said axis with reference to a coordinate system.
Apparatus for the ultrasonic examination of bodies having non-planar surfaces, including a longitudinally extending probe which directs a beam of ultrasonic pulses into the body and receives reflected pulses from the body, wherein the probe is mounted on a boom so that it is pivotable about at least one axis fixed in the boom, said boom being mounted on a column so that it has limited rotational freedom about its own axis and is also pivotable about a third axis perpendicular to the axis of the boom and a fourth axis perpendicular to said third axis, said third and fourth axes being fixed in the column, wherein means are provided to produce electrical signals defining the instantaneous position of a point on the longitudinal axis of the probe and the instantaneous attitude of said axis with reference to a coordinate system.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.