The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Jun. 14, 1994
Filed:
Nov. 18, 1992
James Fearnside, Lexington, MA (US);
Wojtek Sudol, Burlington, MA (US);
Hewlett-Packard Company, Palo Alto, CA (US);
Abstract
An endoscopic ultrasound probe for use in transesophageal echo cardiography comprises a rotatable ultrasound transducer array for obtaining two-dimensional cross-sectional images along a variety of scan planes. The array is formed of a plurality of transducer elements and rotates about an axis perpendicular to the plane of the transducer elements. The rotating array defines a circular region of rotation and has a surface area which substantially matches the area of the circular region of rotation within the probe. More specifically, the elements of the array have varying mechanical lengths such that the rotatable array may have a circular shape, a substantially circular shaped or an N-sided polygonal shape where N is an integer greater than four.