Canon Kabushiki Kaisha

Robert A Kruger

Kenji Oyama

Kenichi Nagae

Takatoshi Tanaka

Hiroshi Nishihara

Takeshi Sekiya

Kazuhiko Fukutani

Kazuhito Oka

An object information acquiring apparatus employed in the present invention includes: a plurality of transducers that generate an electric signal upon reception of an acoustic wave from a measurement subject; a supporter that supports the plurality of transducers such that directional axes of at least a part of the plurality of transducers are gathered together; a point sound source; means for controlling relative positions of the measurement subject and the supporter; a processor that determines respective distances from the plurality of transducers to a focus position of the measurement subject and generates property information relating to the focus position; and a corrector that determines correction data.

Object information acquiring apparatus

Provided is an object information acquiring apparatus including a supporting unit configured to be capable of holding a liquid acoustic matching member, a plurality of receiving elements each supported on the supporting unit to receive an acoustic wave propagated from an object via the acoustic matching member and output an electrical signal, a scanning unit that changes a relative position of each of the receiving elements and the object by moving the supporting unit, a controlling unit that controls a velocity of movement of the supporting unit performed by the scanning unit, and a processing unit that acquires specific information of an inside of the object based on the electrical signal. The scanning unit moves the supporting unit on a path having portions of different curvatures.

A photoacoustic apparatus includes a light irradiation unit configured to irradiate a subject with light a plurality of times; a driving unit configured to move a supporting member so that relative positions of the supporting member and the subject differ at each of the plurality of times; a plurality of transducers configured to receive acoustic waves generated through the plurality of times of irradiation and output a plurality of groups of reception signals corresponding to the plurality of times of irradiation; the supporting member configured to support the transducers such that directional axes of at least some of the transducers converge; a first memory configured to store the groups of reception signals; and a processing unit configured to obtain subject information at a target position by assigning, to each of the groups of reception signals, a weight corresponding to relative positions of the supporting member and the target position.

Photoacoustic apparatus

One aspect of the present invention relates to an examined-portion information acquisition apparatus including two examined-portion holding members each configured to hold one of two examined portions, a receiver configured to receive an acoustic wave, and a moving system configured to move the receiver from a position at which the receiver receives an acoustic wave from one examined portion held by one examined-portion holding member among the two examined-portion holding members to a position at which the receiver receives an acoustic wave from another examined portion held by the other examined-portion holding member, wherein the receiver includes a plurality of transducers configured to receive an acoustic wave, and a supporting member on which the plurality of transducers are arranged, and the plurality of transducers are arranged on the supporting member such that directivity axes of some transducers among the plurality of transducers converge.

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Oriental, NC, United States of America

Robert A Kruger