Hitachi, Ltd.

Hitachi Medical Corporation

Hitachi Electronics Engineering Co., Ltd.

Shin-ichiro Umemura

Takashi Azuma

Miyuki Kono

Kunio Harada

Yoshitoshi Ito

Hironori Ueki

Takafumi Miyatake

Yuichi Miwa

Ken-ichi Kawabata

Hirotaka Baba

Hiroshi Kuribara

Takeshi Fujita

Kenichi Kawabata

Takashi Sugiyama

Kenji Yasuda

Kazuo Takeda

Masao Kamahori

Kazuaki Sasaki

Nami Sugita

Hiroshi Fukuda

Tetsuya Ishikawa

Toshiyuki Mine

Hisaaki Ochi

Yo Taniguchi

Hiroshi Okamoto

Yasuo Morooka

Kageyoshi Katakura

Hiroki Tanaka

Naoki Tanaka

Shuntaro Machida

Hiroshi Kanda

Tatsuya Nagata

Ryuichi Shinomura

Tatsuya Hayashi

Kenko Uchida

Shinji Kurokawa

Hideki Yoshikawa

Kunio Hashiba

Norio Shimizu

Tetsuya Hayashi

Masaharu Kiyama

Masahiro Kayama

Hiroaki Okudaira

Noboru Moriya

Masayoshi Naito

Shokichi Matsunami

Yoshinori Harada

Mariko Yamamoto

Takahumi Miyatake

Naoto Fujita

Mitsuru Tamura

Yuusuke Miyazaki

Takamichi Muramatsu

Charles A Cain

Takashi Okai

Hideyo Kamada

A personal identification system, which uses a vein pattern of a finger, optimizes the amount of light of a light source based on a captured finger image and emphasizes the vein pattern during image processing for identification.

Personal identification system

An objective is to enable calculation of a distribution of a physical property such as a density inside a measurement object, even when the distribution of the physical property value is non-uniform, within a feasible period of time without causing image deterioration due to phenomena such as refraction and multiple-reflections caused by the non-uniformity. To this end, the physical property value that makes an evaluation quantity be an extremum is outputted, where the evaluation quantity is a liner sum or a product of exponential function of: an equation residual quantity that is a residual being a difference between an operator term and an external force term of an equation of motion; a non-uniformity detection equation residual quantity that is a residual of an equation of detecting the non-uniformity of the physical property value from a matching degree of solutions of the equation of motion under two types of boundary conditions; and a conditional equation residual quantity that is a residual of a constraint condition.

Image reconstruction method and device

There is provided a ultrasonic motion detecting device that detects a three-dimensional motion of an object. The ultrasonic motion detecting device, comprises first and second ultrasonic transducershaving piezoelectric elements arranged in an array, which transmit ultrasonic waves to an object and acquire reflection signals from the object, a motion detection unitthat extracts an estimation region which is used for estimating a motion of the object from the reflection signals that are acquired by the first and second ultrasonic transducers, and detects a three-dimensional motion within the estimation region, and an image display unitthat displays the three-dimensional motion within the estimation region, wherein ultrasonic wave scanning surfaces due to the first and second ultrasonic transducers cross over each other.

Ultrasonic motion detecting device, and image producing device and ultrasonic therapeutic using the detecting device

An ultrasonographic technique capable of forming a transmission beam enabling multi-beam transmission/reception of identical transmission sensitivity. An ultrasonographic device for imaging inside of an examinee includes a transmitter for transmitting an ultrasonic pulse signal from an ultrasonic element array to the examinee, and a receiver for receiving the ultrasonic pulse reflected from the examinee. The transmitter transmits an ultrasonic pulse signal having a plurality of peaks of substantially equal transmission intensity in the azimuth direction and a trace in the depth direction of each peak as a substantially straight line, from a transmission opening of the ultrasonic element array to the examinee.

Ultrasonographic device

The present invention provides an ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus realizing improved visibility of a contour shape of signal components in an ultrasonic blood flow spectrum display image. The apparatus includes a gray-level correction unit for correcting intensity of an output result of a Doppler processing unit. The Doppler processing unit calculates a Doppler frequency shift in a reception signal output from a receiver and calculates blood flow velocity of a subject on the basis of the Doppler frequency shift. The gray-level correction unit has: a filtering unit for separating a signal and a noise from each other, which are included in a time-varying waveform of the blood flow velocity of the subject obtained by the Doppler processing unit on the basis of continuity on a space defined by the blood flow velocity and time; and a gray-level corrector for performing a gray level correction using, as a parameter, a boundary value between signal intensity and noise intensity obtained by the filtering unit.

Ultrasonographic device for performing luminance correction

Means for measuring and evaluating a dynamic property of a blood flow in a superficial blood vessel of a living body are constructed. A physical stimulus is given to the blood flow, and an ultrasonic response from the blood flow to the physical stimulus is measured and evaluated, which allows the blood property to be evaluated noninvasively and dynamically. Therefore, a medical check and a lifestyle-related diseases prevention effect are promising.

Blood flow measuring and evaluating apparatus

An ultrasound contrast agent composed of at least one kind of low-boiling water-insoluble substance (with a boiling point lower than 37&#xb0; C.) and at least one kind of high-boiling water-insoluble substance (with a boiling point higher than 37&#xb0; C.). The former vaporizes to absorb ultrasonic energy upon application of ultrasound, thereby causing the latter to vaporize secondarily, with the resulting bubbles producing an echo image. It is less liable to bumping and hence safe.

Ultrasound contrast agent

An ultrasonograph capable of generating a transmission beam having a uniform width over a wide range in an ultrasonic wave propagation direction is provided. A weighted mean value of a plurality of transmission delay time values corresponding to focal lengths of transmission pulse waves set in the ultrasonic wave propagation direction is calculated for each element constituting a transmission aperture and used as the delay time for the element when waves are transmitted. As the weight used for obtaining the weighted mean value, a transmission effective aperture width according to each transmission focal length is selected, and a weight in the direction of the transmit aperture realizing the width is calculated and is used in a focal length direction.

Ultrasonograph

In an ultrasonic imaging device having an image synthesizing unit, correlation between images to be synthesized is computed for balancing between an improvement in contrast resolution and an improvement in spatial resolution, and an amount of displacement between the images is computed. When the amount of displacement is large, the signals after envelop detection are synthesized. When the amount of displacement is small, RF signals are synthesized. Alternatively, the mixing frequency may be variable according to the amount of displacement, and the balance between an improvement in spatial resolution and that in contract resolution is achieved according to a degree of the positional displacement.

Ultrasonographic device and ultrasonographic method

This invention provides an ultrasonic imaging system that implements imaging by distinguishing sharply and definitely the echo components generated by scattering in a microbubble contrast medium, from the tissue harmonic components generated by nonlinear propagation of a transmitted pulse. This ultrasonic imaging system, constructed to transmit/receive ultrasonic pulses to/from a living body and form a contrast image of the inside of the living body by using the contrast-imaging microbubbles, repeats the transmitting/receiving operations four times in all, under the same transmitting/receiving focus conditions at different phase angles [(a)=0&#xb0;, (b)=120&#xb0;, (c)=&#x2212;120&#xb0;, (d)=180&#xb0;] of the carrier of a transmitted pulse wave including a common envelope signal, sums up three time-series receive echo signals associated with (a), (b), (c), forms the contrast image, sums up two time-series receive echo signals associated with (a), (d), forms an image of the living body having a nonlinear pulse propagation property, and makes a superimposed display of the two kinds of images.

Ultrasonic imaging device

The present invention realizes a Doppler velocity detecting technique capable of performing velocity detection and analysis with a suppressed error while excellently distinguishing a clutter signal, and provides an ultrasonographic device using the technique. In a Doppler velocity detection device comprising means for transmitting/receiving pulse waves to/from a subject a plurality of times, and velocity analyzing means for analyzing a velocity of a moving reflector in the subject on the basis of a reception echo signal, the velocity analyzing means obtains a complex expansion coefficient by linearly connecting an expansion coefficient of an even-numbered degree term and an expansion coefficient of an odd-numbered degree term which is different from the even-numbered degree term by one degree, derived when reception echo time-series signals obtained by arranging reception echo signals of equal lapse time from pulse transmission times in order of the transmission times are expanded as components of a Legendre polynomial starting from the 0th degree, by using an imaginary unit as a coefficient, and obtains a signed velocity signal of a moving reflector in the subject on the basis of-the ratio between the magnitude of each complex expansion coefficient and the magnitude of an interval between the complex expansion coefficients.

Doppler velocity detection device and ultrasonographic device using the same

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Hachioji, Japan

Shin-ichiro Umemura