Ultrasound imaging apparatus and method using Golay codes with orthogonal property

#The present invention relates to an ultrasound imaging apparatus and a method thereof and, more particularly, to an ultrasound imaging apparatus and a method of the same for forming ultrasound images using a set of Golay codes having orthogonal property.

#An ultrasound imaging apparatus transmits ultrasound signals to an object to be examined and processes signals reflected from the object to provide plane images of the object. It has been widely used in medical apparatuses.

#As the power of the ultrasound used in ultrasound imaging apparatuses becomes strong, power of received ultrasound which is scattered or reflected from a medium becomes strong too thereby obtaining excellent signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Accordingly, if possible, it is advantageous to use ultrasound having great amplitude, i.e., a transmitting wave of high voltage. Consequently, it is desirable to transmit ultrasound having great amplitude and short pulse length.

#The aforementioned aspects and other features of the present invention will be explained in the following description, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings wherein:

#FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a conventional ultrasound imaging apparatus for forming an ultrasound image using Golay codes;

#FIG. 2 illustrates an ultrasound transmitting process in the conventional ultrasound imaging apparatus as shown in FIG. 1;

#Preferred embodiments of the present invention will now be made with references to the accompanied drawings. Through the entire drawings, like parts as those in FIGS. 1 and 2 are given with same reference numerals, and detailed descriptions thereof will be omitted.

#First, the orthogonality of Golay codes to be used in this invention will be discussed.

#As defined in Eq. (2) in the above, for complementary code sequences (A1, A2), there exist complementary code sequences (B1, B2) that are orthogonal to code sequences (A1, A2). There are M code sequence sets satisfying the following equation Eq. (3): ∑ i = 1 M ⁢ ⁢ ∑ l = 1 L - k ⁢ ⁢ a il ⁢ b i , l + k * = 0 Eq. (3)