Ultrasound system with nonuniform rotation corrector

A method for imaging body tissues from interior of a cavity in a patient's body, comprising:

• (a) inserting a probe into the cavity in a patient's body, the probe having a distal end for extending inside the cavity, an ultrasonic transducer at said distal end, and a proximal end to extend outside the body;
• (b) rotating a director associated with the ultrasonic transducer in the probe to transmit sequential ultrasonic pulses in an angular pattern from the distal end based on a target angular pattern and receiving ultrasonic energy reflected and scattered from the patient's body tissues at the distal end of the probe, such that each transmitted ultrasonic pulse results in a received signal (RF-line) converted from said reflected and scattered ultrasonic energy, said RF-line being use fid for subsequently forming a tissue image;
• (c) determining the transmitted angular pattern by analyzing the RF-lines to determining angular separation therebetween;
• and
• (d) correcting distortion of the tissue image caused by the transmitted angular pattern, as determined by analyzing the RF-lines, being different from the target angular pattern.

A method for imaging body tissues from interior of a cavity in a patient's body, comprising:

• (a) inserting a probe into the cavity in a patient's body, the probe having a distal end for entering the body, a proximal end to extend outside the body, and a transducer at said distal end;
• (b) rotating the transducer to transmit sequential ultrasonic pulses in an angular pattern from the distal end based on a target angular pattern and receiving ultrasonic pulses reflected and scattered from the patient's body tissues at the distal end of the probe, such that each transmitted ultrasonic pulse results in a received signal (RF-line) converted from said reflected and scattered ultrasonic energy, said RF-line being useful for subsequently forming a tissue image;
• (c) determining the transmitted angular pattern by analyzing data lines to determine the similarity between RF-lines to determine the angular separation between RF-lines, wherein a high degree of similarity indicates a small angular separation and a lesser degree of similarity indicates a greater separation, the angular separation between the RF-lines determining the transmitted angular pattern, the data lines being derived from the RF-lines and being selected from the group consisting of RF-lines, RF amplitude lines, RF phase lines, baseband lines, baseband amplitude lines, baseband phase lines, quantized RF phases, and quantized baseband phases;
• and
• (d) correcting distortion of the tissue image caused by the transmitted angular pattern being different from the target angular pattern, based on the transmitted angular pattern as determined by analyzing the RF-lines caused by reflection and scattering from the body tissues alone.