Ultrasonic diagnostic imaging system transducer array with multiline patches
AssigneeKoninklijke Philips Electronics N.V.
InventorsJohn D. Fraser, Clifford R. Cooley, Brent Stephen Robinson
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Abstract
An ultrasonic imaging method and apparatus are described for imaging the coronary arteries of the heart. The vascular system is infused with an ultrasonic contrast agent. A volumetric region of the heart wall including a coronary artery is three dimensionally scanned. A projection image of the volumetric region is produced from the scanning, providing a two dimensional contrast image of the coronary artery with the appearance of an angiogram. Preferably the coronary artery signals are segmented from contrast signals emanating from the myocardium and the heart blood pool so that the coronary arteries are clearly highlighted and distinct in the ultrasonic angiogram.
Claims19
An ultrasonic diagnostic scanhead comprising:
- a scanhead enclosure;
- an array of transducer elements extending in at least two dimensions, located in the scanhead enclosure, and exhibiting a plurality of groupings (patches) of localized elements;
- a plurality of microbeamformers, located in the scanhead enclosure and coupled to the patches, each of which acts to beamform the signals received by the elements of a patch to produce at least two differently steered receive beams (multilines) from one set of received echo signals.
In an ultrasound system, an ultrasonic scanhead having an array of transducer elements extending in at least two dimensions and arranged in sub-aperture patches of localized elements, each patch being coupled to a microbeamformer in the scanhead which acts to beamform the echo signals received by the patch, a method for producing multiple scanlines in response to a single transmit event comprising:
- transmitting ultrasonic energy from elements of the array;
- receiving a sequence of echo signals in response to the transmitted energy at the elements of a plurality of sub-aperture patches;
- and
- forming multiple differently steered scanlines in a microbeamformer for each patch from the sequence of echo signals received at the respective patch.
An ultrasonic diagnostic imaging system comprising:
- a scanhead having a two dimensional array transducer, the elements of which are grouped into patches of localized elements during echo reception, and a plurality of microbeamformers each coupled to a patch which act to produce multiple, differently steered multilines for the patch in response to a single transmit event;
- a signal transmission device coupled to the microbeamformers;
- and
- an ultrasound system having a beamformer coupled to the signal transmission device which acts to beamform a plurality of multilines from the patch multilines.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.