Siemens Medical Solutions Usa, Inc.

Siemens Corporation

Jian-Hua Mo

Kutay F Ustuner

Charles E Bradley

Bruce A McDermott

John Douglas Marshall

Mervin Mencias Smith-Casem

Timothy L Proulx

Patric Ljung

Xuan-Ming Lu

Guillaume Stordeur

Bruce Mcdermott

Rather than using a coaxial cable, a twisted pair of wires is provided for each element-to-beamformer connection. Differential mode signals are transmitted between the transducer element and the respective channel. A multi-layer element is used for operation with the differential mode signals. In catheters or other probes, coaxial cables are not used. Using differential mode signals over twisted pairs allows reduction or rejection of common mode cross-talk and/or interference.

Ultrasound transducer with differential mode signaling

A multi-layer transducer operates with only one system channel per element. Passive switching connects the layers differently for transmit than for receive operation, such as connecting two layers in parallel for transmit and in series for receive. Any passive switching may be used, such as current and voltage limiting circuits. Tuning may be passively switched. Different tuning circuits are passively switched as a function of voltage level between transmit and receive operations.

Layer switching for an ultrasound transducer array

An irregular ultrasound sampling grid is reconstructed to a three-dimensional grid for imaging. Volume data acquired with a helix transducer includes a fractional offset of data spaced along one dimension, resulting in the irregular ultrasound sampling grid. To determine a voxel value for a grid point on a uniform grid, two adjacent planes are identified. The sample locations in the two planes are not aligned, being on the irregular ultrasound sampling grid. Hardware acceleration devices, such as a graphics processing unit, perform bilinear interpolation in each of the planes. The data of each plane is interpolated to the proper global azimuth-range coordinate corresponding with the grid point. The bilinearly interpolated values from each plane are then linearly interpolated to the grid point.

Three-dimensional reconstruction for irregular ultrasound sampling grids

A transducer array includes two or more sub-arrays that move relative to each other. Position sensors on each of the sub-arrays provide spatial coordination for beamforming and/or image forming to yield extended field of view and high image resolution. The adaptable transducer array, such as mounted on a flexible transducer housing, allows the array to better conform to the patient during internal or external use.

Flexible ultrasound transducer array

A medical diagnostic ultrasound transducer system has at least a first and a second set of transducer layers of an element. Each set has one or more transducer layers with independent electrical access. A transmit event through a first set of transducer layers with broadband electrical signals generates acoustic signals containing at least two different frequency bands, and a receive event through a second and different set of transducer layers receives multiple tissue harmonic signals to generate a wide bandwidth response. Fundamental signals can be reduced with a pulse inversion technique through a second transmit event of inverted pulses, a second receive event and superposition of signals from the two receive events.

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Palo Alto, CA, United States of America

Jian-Hua Mo