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:
Sep. 05, 2017
Filed:
Aug. 07, 2012
Teiichiro Ikeda, Tokyo, JP;
Takashi Azuma, Tokyo, JP;
Hiroshi Masuzawa, Tokyo, JP;
HITACHI, LTD., Tokyo, JP;
Abstract
A weight value used for a beamforming process performed on received signals in an ultrasound imaging apparatus is obtained with a small amount of computations and with a high degree of precision, even when a method of adaptive signal processing is employed. Multiple elementsreceive ultrasound signals from a test subject, and the similarity operatorobtains the similarity between the received signals x(n). By using the similarity C(n) between the received signals obtained by the similarity operator, the adaptive weight operatorcomputes the adaptive weight w(n) in association with the similarity. The beamforming operatoruses the adaptive weight w(n) and the received signal x(n) to generate a beamforming output. The imaging processoruses the beamforming output to generate image data. By way of example, the similarity operatorperforms computations of the similarity in the time direction.