Acuson Corporation

Shenzhen Mindray Bio-medical Electronics Co., Ltd.

Siemens Medical Solutions Usa, Inc.

Zonare Medical Systems, Inc.

Albert Gee

Christopher R Cole

J Nelson Wright

Glen W McLaughlin

Kutay F Ustuner

David J Finger

Samuel H Maslak

David J Napolitano

Ching-Hua Chou

Thomas Liu

Ting-Lan Ji

Larry Y L Mo

Robert W Steins

Mirsaid Seyed Bolorforosh

Brian Derek DeBusschere

Bhaskar S Ramamurthy

Stuart L Carp

Jonathan Bernard

John Alexander Hossack

Matthew N O'Donnell

John W Allison

Gregory L Holley

Joseph A Urbano

Kevin S Randall

Pai-Chi Li

Danhua Zhao

Constantine Simopoulos

Seshadri Srinivasan

Hugh G Larsen

Xiaohui Hao

Laurence J Newell

Meng-Lin Li

Tom L Thomas

Sungrung Huang

Systems and methods for performing diagnostic sonography. Ultrasound information of a subject region can be collected. The ultrasound information can be based on one or more exponentially swept ultrasound chirp pulses transmitted toward the subject region and backscatter of the subject region from the one or more exponentially swept ultrasound chirp pulses. One or more corresponding harmonic responses and a corresponding fundamental response for each of the one or more exponentially swept ultrasound chirp pulses can be separated from the ultrasound information. Further, one or more non-linear properties of the subject region can be identified based on either or both of the one or more corresponding harmonic responses and the corresponding fundamental response for each of the one or more exponentially swept ultrasound chirp pulses.

Ultrasonic characterization of non-linear properties of tissue

Systems and methods are disclosed for performing ultrasound imaging. Channel domain data can be received from an ultrasound transducer to form one or more channel domain data sets. A first ultrasound processing operation can be applied to the channel domain data to generate a first subset of one or more images from the one or more channel domain data sets. A second ultrasound processing operation can be applied to the channel domain data to generate a second subset of one or more images from the one or more channel domain data sets. Image characteristics of the first subset of one or more images and the second subset of one or more images can be regionally analyzed to identify regional image characteristics of the first and second subsets of one or more images. The first subset of one or more images can be blended with the second subset of one or more images based on the regional image characteristics to generate one or more composite images.

Adaptive weighting for adaptive ultrasound imaging

Systems and methods for utilizing a hybrid transmitter in an ultrasound system. A system can include a hybrid transmitter configured to transmit ultrasound waves toward a subject area. The hybrid transmitter can comprise a linear transmitter configured to generate linear transmitter output and a switching transmitter configured to generate switching transmitter output. The hybrid transmitter can also comprise a summer configured to sum the linear transmitter output and the switching transmitter output to generate hybrid transmitter output for driving a transducer load to generate the ultrasound waves transmitted towards the subject area. The ultrasound system can also comprise a receiver configured to receive one or more ultrasound waves from the subject area in response to the ultrasound waves transmitted toward the subject area for generating ultrasound images of the subject area.

Hybrid ultrasound transmitter

Systems and methods for attenuation measuring using ultrasound. In various embodiments, echo data corresponding to a detection of echoes of one or more ultrasound signals transmitted into tissue are received. The echoes can be received from a range of depths of the tissue. Spectral measurements across the range of depths of the tissue are obtained using the echo data. Attenuation characteristics of the tissue across the range of depths of the tissue can be estimated using the spectral measurements across the range of depths of the tissue. Specifically, the attenuation characteristics of the tissue can be estimated using the spectral measurements and known spectral characteristics of the one or more ultrasound signals transmitted into the tissue.

Attenuation estimation using ultrasound

Systems and methods are disclosed for an ultrasound system. In various embodiments, a system is configured to receive echo data corresponding to a detection of an echo of a pulse signal, generate a set of transformations based on the echo data, and generate a set of point estimates for a frequency dependent filtering coefficient of a spectral response. The system is further configured to extract a set of attenuation coefficients based on the set of point estimates for the frequency dependent filtering coefficient and generate image data for the material of interest based on the set of attenuation coefficients.

Transducer spectral normalization

An ultrasonic imaging method includes activating a transmit aperture within a multi-element transducer array, transmitting one or more ultrasonic beams along scan direction(s) that span the region of interest, for each transmit event, receiving ultrasound echoes from each element of a receive aperture, grouping the receive channel echo data into two or more sets corresponding to different receive sub-apertures, combining each sub-aperture data set to generate partially focused echo-location data for one or more reconstruction lines, and storing all the sub-aperture echo data sets during a storage period in a format that can be retrieved for later analysis. A method includes, during a post-storage period, retrieving stored sub-aperture data, combining the sub-aperture data to form one or more selected reconstruction lines, processing echo data to extract motion information from one or more sample positions along the selected reconstruction lines, and displaying an image representative of the processed motion information.

System and method for providing variable ultrasound array processing in a post-storage mode

Adaptive grating lobe suppression is provided. Received ultrasound data is measured, compared or otherwise processed to determine the presence of grating lobe energy. A further process is then altered as a function of the level of grating lobe energy. In one embodiment, the adaptive grating lobe suppression is implemented in the receive beamformer. Data representing a virtual element is formed as a normalized sum of data from adjacent sparse elements. The data from the adjacent elements is correlated to determine the presence of grating lobe energy as a function of the amount of shift associated with the peak correlation. A phase shift is applied to the data representing the virtual element where sufficient grating lobe energy is determined. In another embodiment, an amount of grating lobe energy is measured by comparing data from prior to a filter with filtered data. The filter is selected to isolate main lobe energy from grating lobe energy. A gain is modulated as a function of any detected grating lobe energy or filtered or unfiltered data is selected for further processing.

Adaptive grating lobe suppression in ultrasound imaging

Diagnostic ultrasound flow imaging is performed with coded excitation pulses. Due to the use of frequency coded excitation pulses, flow information may suffer from spatial misregistration and estimate errors. Spatial position shift in flow data is offset for alignment with B-mode or other imaging. The flow estimates are compensated for the imaging center frequency variation with depth. The wide bandwidth information available due to coded excitation may allow anti-aliasing by estimating velocities from two frequency bands.

Ultrasound diagnostic flow imaging with coded excitation

Growing community of inventors

Los Altos, CA, United States of America

Albert Gee