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:
Nov. 27, 2012
Filed:
Jun. 29, 2009
Albert W. Wegener, Portola Valley, CA (US);
Albert W. Wegener, Portola Valley, CA (US);
White Eagle Sonic Technologies, Inc., Santa Clara, CA (US);
Abstract
In an ultrasound imaging system that applies a beamformer to received ultrasound signal samples to form one or more beams represented by arrays of beamformed samples, a method and an apparatus compress each array of beamformed samples independently of the other arrays to form compressed beams. A plurality of analog to digital converters sample multiple analog ultrasound signals produced by a transducer array to provide multiple streams of ultrasound signal samples to the beamformer. The compressed beams are transferred via a digital interface to a signal processor. At the signal processor, the compressed beams are decompressed to form decompressed beams. The signal processor further processes the decompressed beams for diagnostic imaging, such as for B-mode and Doppler imaging, and scan conversion to prepare the resulting ultrasound image for display. This abstract does not limit the scope of the invention as described in the claims.