Siemens Aktiengesellschaft

Dietmar Hiller

Ulrich Saugeon

Gert Hetzel

Phased-array apparatus has a number of ultrasonic transducer elements (E1 to E64) to which are associated delay line elements (M1, T1 to M64, T64, W1-1, W1-2, N1 to W16-1, W16-2, N16; W1 to W16; VL1 to VL64, VR1 to VR16) to provide reception. In order that the control angle may be adjusted with high accuracy, according to the inventive principles delay line elements are provided for the received signals with a short and with a long delay, and several adjacent channels are combined for signal processing. Due to this arrangement, economical constructions of embodiments of the invention are realized.

Phased-array equipment

In medical ultrasonic technology (in particular with phased arrays) it is necessary to delay in time a plurality of received ultrasound signals and subsequently to add them after they are as nearly in phase as possible. The delay times required for this purpose are approximately between 0 and 10 .mu.s. The ultrasound signal is analyzed as to envelope and a sign. The envelope is then delayed either in analog (e.g. with LC delay lines) or digitally (e.g. with shift registers) through a delay means which is adjustable in coarse time steps of e.g. 500 ns. The sign signal corresponding to the sign of the ultrasound signal is delayed via a digital delay section which is adjustable in small time steps of e.g. 50 ns. Phase coherence to other ultrasound signals can be established. Thereafter the delayed sign signal and the delayed envelope signal are multiplied one by the other in a multiplier. Thereafter the output signal is filtered in a low-pass filter. The output from the low-pass filter then represents the delayed form of the ultrasound signal.

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Erlangen, Germany

Dietmar Hiller