Pulse echo ultrasonic system
AssigneeDel Mar Avionics
InventorWilliam J. Skidmore, III
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A pulse echo ultrasonic system is provided for medical diagnosis, and the like, which has particular application to echocardiography, and which includes a digital memory for presenting a rolling dynamic display in shades of gray on the screen of a cathode-ray tube scanned in accordance with present-day television standards, and which may be interfaced with present-day video tape recorders. The system of the invention involves a time extrapolating function which serves to expand the effective memory capacity when used in a selective mode applicable to echocardiography, and certain other bio-medical areas, such as scintillation camera displays, and other radiographic displays used in the area of medicine.
Claims7
In an ultrasonic echo system which includes a transmitter, an ultrasonic transducer connected to the transmitter, a receiver coupled to the transducer for receiving echo pulses therefrom, and a television monitor coupled to the receiver, said receiver including:
- an analog-digital time position encoder for producing a first digital signal representing the time position of the peak amplitude of each received echo pulse within a predetermined sample period;
- an analog-digital peak amplitude encoder for producing a second digital signal representing the peak amplitude of each of said received echo pulses;
- digital memory means storing multi-bit digital words representing different gray levels;
- means coupled to the time position encoder and to the peak amplitude encoder for introducing the first and second digital signals therefrom as multi-bit words to the digital memory means;
- and means for deriving a plurality of multi-bit words from the digital memory means representing different gray levels in response to each such multi-bit word introduced to said digital memory means.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.