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:
Feb. 15, 2005
Filed:
Mar. 19, 2002
Sadao Omata, Koriyama, JP;
Sadao Omata, Koriyama, JP;
Nihon University, Tokyo, JP;
Abstract
The present invention facilitates measurement of characteristic values corresponding to hardness of a material to be measured inside a living body using the response of a vibration transmission characteristic without the need to remove other tissue materials of the living body by dissecting or opening the abdomen of the living body. The present invention includes a sensor () made up of a transmitter and a receiver, frequency component analysis section () for the incident wave and reflected wave, a frequency/phase difference specification section () for comparing the spectral distribution of the incident wave with the spectral distribution of the reflected wave and specifying a phase difference θx, which is a difference between the phase of the incident wave and the phase of the reflected wave at each frequency fx, and a phase difference compensating operation section () that inputs the frequency fx and phase difference θx, performs compensating operations using a reference transmission characteristic curve which has been obtained as a reference beforehand and obtains a frequency variation df when the input phase difference θx is reduced to zero, and is characterized in that hardness of the material is calculated from df.