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:
Dec. 07, 2004
Filed:
Dec. 31, 2002
Feng Lin, Waukesha, WI (US);
Satchi Panda, Greenfield, WI (US);
Richard Yung Chiao, Menomonee Falls, WI (US);
General Electric Company, Schenectady, NY (US);
Abstract
A method and apparatus for smoothing speckle pattern and increasing contrast resolution in ultrasound images is provided. Compared to other frequency compounding techniques, wide-band harmonic frequency compounding reduces speckle noise without sacrificing the resolution. Compared to spatial compounding, wide-band harmonic frequency compounding is more robust against tissue motion because sequential vectors rather than frames are summed together for compounding. The method and apparatus is implemented by transmitting two or more firings, combining two or more of the firings coherently to extract the tissue-generated harmonic components, detecting the outputs of the coherent sums and detecting one or more firings before coherent sum, and finally combining all detected outputs to form the compounded image. The method and apparatus sums wide-band fundamental and wide-band harmonic images after detection to form a compounded image. Unlike other frequency compounding methods, both transmit and receive signals are wide-band and no narrow-band filters are necessary. Multiple firings with two or more different transmit waveforms are transmitted to each focal zone.