Ge Medical Systems Kretztechnik Gmbh & Co Ohg

Kretztechnik Ag

Franz Wiesauer

Arthur Gritzky

Erwin Fosodeder

Min Hwa Lee

Artur Gritzky

The invention describes a procedure for the examination of objects by the means of ultrasound waves whereby a volume-of-interest is scanned by a 3D-ultrasound-probe by moving a transmitter/receiver beam in a scan plane within selectable limits. This B-mode scan plane is also simultaneously moved in a direction across to this scan plane. The transmitting of sound pulses and acquiring the echo-signals is done more or less continuously during the movement in B-plane and across to it The echo-signals are stored in a volume memory on addresses which correspond to the spatial position of the echo-generating structure inside the object. These stored data-sets are evaluated by a 3D-processor and are represented on at least one display unit by different algorithms with selectable parameters. Important is that the acquisition and the representation is done continuously.

Procedure for an examination of objects by the means of ultrasound waves

In a method for examining objects using ultrasound according to the reflection process, in particular 3D scanning, the object is scanned with an ultrasound transducer ( ) with associated transmit/receive unit ( ) appropriate for volume scanning and the obtained echo data are stored in a volume memory ( ) in clear assignation to the local coordinates of the reflection points. During scanning the spatial line density and/or the temporal repetition frequency, in which certain volume areas are scanned, is deflected by the contents of the information obtained or obtainable from these areas in such a form that areas having less information content are scanned more seldom and/or with less scanning density than areas having a higher information content.

Method for examining objects using ultrasound

For that method to examine an object by using ultrasound waves a spatial region of the object is scanned by a 3D probe. From the reflected echo signals just signals are processed which fulfil certain selectable criteria and taken to display it according to their position on at least one display device. For the representation of one or more objects with one or more interesting layers the geometrical selection criterion is a shell which approximates a surface of the object or of a layer and which can have a certain thickness, and only signals which are selected by this shell will be processed and displayed. This results in a undisturbed representation of the object and allows better view to the characteristic of the surface regarding structure or perfusion.

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Zipf, Austria

Franz Wiesauer