Ultrasound diagnostic apparatus and method for acquiring ultrasound data

A method of acquiring ultrasound data comprising:

• transmitting and receiving an ultrasonic signal using an ultrasound probe having array transducers toward and from a three-dimensional region of a subject;
• acquiring ultrasound data by a plurality of executions of multibeam forming, the ultrasound data comprising a plurality of sets of ultrasound data along a plurality of directions by a one-time transmitting and receiving operation for each of a plurality of slices having different slice directions;
• synthesizing a plurality of sets of synthesized data using the ultrasound data acquired during said executions, each of the sets of synthesized data being acquired along a respective plurality of different receiving directions with respect to a transmitting direction over at least two of the slices;
• and
• generating image data on the basis of the synthesized ultrasound data, wherein
• the transmitting and receiving comprises executing a plurality of scans along a scan direction which is essentially perpendicular to a direction of ultrasound transmitting, the scans being performed in different slice directions which are essentially perpendicular to the scan direction,
• the data synthesizing includes synthesizing sets of synthesized ultrasound data relating to different scans,
• the transmitting and receiving comprises scanning a first slice by repeating four-beam multibeam forming having a predetermined spread along the scan direction and scanning a second slice by repeating said four-beam multibeam forming, wherein scanning the second slice starts at a position located a half of the predetermined spread from a start position of the first slice, and
• synthesizing ultrasound data comprises synthesizing 2 sets of ultrasound data for one multibeam forming of the first slice and synthesizing 2 sets of ultrasound data for one multibeam forming of the second slice, the 2 sets of the ultrasound data corresponding to the second slice relating to directions having essentially same scan direction component as directions relating to the 2 sets of the ultrasound data corresponding to the first slice.

A method of acquiring ultrasound data comprising:

• transmitting a first and a second plurality of ultrasonic signals toward a subject along a scanning direction over respective first and second slices having different slice directions using an ultrasound probe having array transducers;
• acquiring ultrasonic data from each of a second plurality of different directions along said scanning direction for each of said first and second plurality of ultrasonic signals, to form a first and a second plurality of sets of data;
• synthesizing the ultrasonic data to produce synthesized ultrasound data using ultrasonic data from both of said first and second plurality of sets of data;
• and
• generating image data on the basis of the synthesized ultrasound data, wherein
• transmitting comprises scanning a first slice by repeating four-beam multibeam forming having a predetermined spread along the scanning direction and scanning a second slice by repeating said four-beam multibeam forming, wherein scanning the second slice starts at a position located a half of the predetermined spread from a start position of the first slice;
• and
• synthesizing ultrasound data comprises synthesizing 2 sets of ultrasound data for one multibeam forming of the first slice and synthesizing 2 sets of ultrasound data for one multibeam forming of the second slice, the 2 sets of the ultrasound data corresponding to the second slice relating to directions having essentially same scanning direction component as directions relating to the 2 sets of the ultrasound data corresponding to the first slice.