Ultrasonic diagnostic imaging of the coronary arteries

An ultrasonic diagnostic imaging system which produces a three dimensional ultrasound image comprising:

• an ultrasonic scanhead including
• a two dimensional array of transducer elements;
• a plurality of micro-beamformers, each of which is coupled to a patch of transducer elements to produce a sum of beamformed signals from elements of the patch;
• a cable having conductors coupled to the micro-beamformers;
• and
• an ultrasound system including
• a multiline beamformer, coupled to the conductors of the cable, which produces multiple simultaneous scanlines from the time-aligned patch signals;
• a harmonic signal detector, coupled to the beamformer, which detects nonlinear echo signal components returned by an ultrasonic contrast agent;
• a three dimensional image processor responsive to nonlinear echo signal components;
• and
• a display coupled to the image processor.