Konica Minolta Medical and Graphic, Inc.

Daisuke Kaji

Yoshihiro Takeda

Kazuya Osada

Disclosed is an ultrasound diagnostic imaging apparatus including an ultrasound probe which outputs a transmission ultrasound wave toward a subject due to a driving signal and which outputs a received signal by receiving a reflection ultrasound wave from the subject, a transmitting unit which makes the ultrasound probe generate the transmission ultrasound wave by outputting each of a first transmission signal, a second transmission signal, a third transmission signal and a fourth transmission signal as the driving signal, and a signal component extraction unit which extracts a higher harmonic component and a difference frequency component by compounding a first received signal, a second received signal, a third received signal and a fourth received signal.

Ultrasound diagnostic imaging apparatus

Disclosed is an ultrasound diagnostic imaging apparatus including an ultrasound probe which outputs a transmission ultrasound toward a subject and a received signal obtained by receiving a reflected ultrasound from the subject, a transmission unit, a receiving unit and a puncture needle position detection unit which obtains a puncture needle echo information indicating an angle and a position of the puncture needle from the plane-wave received signal, and an ultrasound image is displayed on the basis of the received signal, the transmission unit applies the driving signal to the ultrasound probe so that a plane-wave transmission ultrasound is output from the ultrasound probe, and the receiving unit receives a plane-wave received signal which is obtained in such a way that the plane-wave transmission ultrasound is transmitted from the ultrasound probe, reflected by a puncture needle to be the reflected ultrasound and received by the ultrasound probe.

Disclosed is an ultrasound diagnostic imaging apparatus including an ultrasound probe which outputs transmission ultrasound waves toward a subject by a driving signal and which outputs received signals by receiving reflection ultrasound waves from the subject and a transmitting unit which generates the transmission ultrasound waves by the ultrasound probe by outputting the driving signal, and the transmitting unit generates the driving signal of square wave having a waveform in which a standard pulse signal where a pulse cycle is 2 T is combined with two first pulse signals of same polarity having a pulse width A (A&#x3c;T) and a second pulse signal having a pulse width B (B=T&#x2212;2A), the second pulse signal having a polarity different from the polarity of the first pulse signals.

Ultrasound diagnostic imaging apparatus having particular driving signal characteristics

An image processor executes an image processing under an appropriate condition. The image possessor comprises an important area detecting section () for detecting a bone portion or soft portion as an important area included in an X-ray image, a weight image creating section () for creating a weight image for imparting a predetermined weight to the pixels of the important area, histogram computing section () for multiplying the weight of the weight image by the pixel value of the X-ray image and computing a weighted histogram from the results of the multiplication, evaluating section () for evaluating the weighted histogram with a predetermined evaluation function and computing a shift value at which the evaluation result takes on a maximum value, image processing condition determining section () for so determining an image processing condition so as to obtain a predetermined processing result from the pixel value of the X-ray image corresponding to the maximum value of the evaluation function for obtaining a shift value, and image processing section () for executing an image processing under the image processing condition.

Growing community of inventors

Hachioji, Japan

Daisuke Kaji