Panasonic Corporation

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.

Akiko Uchikawa

Yasuhiro Nakamura

Hisashi Akiyama

Morio Nishigaki

Yoshihiko Ito

Hidenori Yoshitomi

There is provided a first storage for storing digital reception beam data converted from a reception beam formed from an ultrasonic received signal; a first control component for controlling reading and writing of data from/in the first storage; a filter coefficient calculation portion for calculating a filter coefficient based on information on the reception beam, the information including a positional relationship between the reception beam and a transmission beam; and a first spatial filter operation portion for subjecting each of a plurality of the reception beam data including data of beams received in parallel from a single transmission beam to filtering processing for reducing a difference in image quality between adjacent beams based on the filter coefficient. Image data output from the first spatial filter operation portion are converted into scanning of a display monitor so as to display an image on the display monitor.

Ultrasonic diagnosis apparatus

A small ultrasound diagnostic device is provided at a low cost that enables the appropriate control by a single power supply unit so as to give a predetermined transmission power to a driving waveform different for each mode without excess or deficiency and without affecting properties of the driving waveform. The ultrasound diagnostic device includes: an ultrasound generation unit () that transmits ultrasound; a waveform generation unit () that generates a single pulse or a burst pulse whose duty factor is variable in units of a time that is a period corresponding to a frequency outside a frequency band of the ultrasound generation unit () so as to drive the ultrasound generation unit (); and a single power supply unit () that determines an amplitude of a driving waveform generated by the waveform generation unit (). Thereby, an acoustic power of the transmitted ultrasound can be controlled without making the transmission amplitude variable.

Ultrasound diagnostic device

A simple, compact and inexpensive ultrasonic wave diagnostic apparatus of electronic focus type in which the delay amount for controlling the phase of a transmission signal for each piezoelectric element is stored in a delay amount storage unit, the pulse width for controlling the frequency of the transmission signal for each piezoelectric element is stored in a pulse width storage unit, the time elapsed from a reference time point is counted by a counter, a change point of the transmission signal from the reference time point is calculated by a processor, the output of the processor is compared with the output of the counter by a comparator, a plurality of clock signals having different phases are generated by a multiphase clock generator, a clock generated by the multiphase clock signal generator is selected by a selective controller, and a pulse of the transmission signal is generated on the basis of the selected clock by a toggle circuit. The delay amount, the duty factor and the frequency of the transmission signal are controlled for each piezoelectric element to converge the ultrasonic wave beam, thereby making possible a highly accurate diagnosis with high image quality.

Growing community of inventors

Tokyo, Japan

Akiko Uchikawa