Ultrasound in Med. l? Biol. Vol. 10 pp I-II Printed in the USA. Allrights reserved.

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NEW PATENTS

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4422332 4418575

DYNAMIC FOCUSING AND SECTORIAL SCANNING ECHOGRAPHY DEVICE

Jean-Charles Dubuis, Michel Martin, Bernard Piaget, Jean-Francois Piquard, Jacques Vacher, Saint Martin d’Heres, France assigned to Com- missariat a 1’Energie Atomique

METHOD FOR PROCESSING ULTRASONIC ECHO SIGNALS OF

BOTH DIRECTIONALLY REFLECTING AS WELL AS

NONDIRECTIONALLY SCATTERING OBJECTS,

PARTICULARLY FOR ULTRASONIC IMAGE

PROCESSING IN THE FIELD OF SUBSTANCE OR TISSUE

INVESTIGATION

Eckart Hundt, Elmar Trautenberg, Haar, Federal Republic Of Germany assigned to Siemens Aktiengesellschaft

An echography device with dynamic focusing and sectorial scanning, comprising a trans- mitting portion (16) and a receiving portion (18) constituting piezoelectric transducers (4), jux- taposed in a form of a linear bar (2), each trans- ducer (4) being associated with a delay line (26,32), the delays applied when a wave is being received being determined as a function of a reference dependent on the delays when the wave is being retransmitted and stored in a digital memory (34), the said reference being fed into a frequency adjustable oscillator (42) associated with a servo-device (38, 56, 54) through a computer.

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In an exemplary embodiment partial images of an object are obtained by scanning the object from different directions, e.g. by compound scanning. For a given object region or point, the different partial images may include a response maximum signifying a directionally reflecting re- gion. Other object regions may provide echo signal amplitudes in a range signifying a locally isotropic scattering. According to the disclosure,

I

the partial images are linked or combined taking account of the nature of the respective object re- gions as being directionally reflecting or non- directionally scattering.

4417475

ULTRASONIC DIAGNOSING APPARATUS

Takahisa Okazaki, Otawara, Japan assigned to Tokyo Shibaura Denki Kabushiki Kaisha

An ultrasonic diagnosing apparatus comprising a probe for radiating ultrasonic wave beams toward a target and converting ultrasonic echo data reflected from the target into electrical signals indicative of a tomogram of the target, an ultrasonic wave transmission and reception cir- cuit for controlling the probe to radiate the ul- trasonic wave beams in predetermined ultrasonic field patterns, a processor for pro- cessing the electrical signals in accordance with correlations among the ultrasonic echo data, which depend upon the ultrasonic field patterns to eliminate artifact components of the tomogram from the electrical signals, a display device for displaying the tomogram of the target in response to the output signal of the processor, and a system pulse generator for generating a system synchronizing pulse supplied to the trans- mission and reception circuit and processor.

4416286

ULTRASONIC BLOOD FLOW MEASURING APPARATUS

Kazuhiro Iinuma, Yasutsugu Seo, Shigeru Sato, Yaita, Japan assigned to Tokyo Shibaura Denki Kabushiki Kaisha

An ultrasonic blood flow measuring apparatus comprising: an ultrasonic probe for transmitting an ultrasonic beam into a tissue under examina- tion in response to an electrical driving pulse and for receiving an ultrasonic echo reflected from the tissue to convert the same into an electrical signal; a pulse generator arrangement for gene- rating the electrical driving pulse of said probe; a detector circuit for detecting a tomogram signal from the electrical signal; a Doppler signal pro- cessing circuit for extracting Doppler frequency shift components due to velocity of a blood flow in the tissue from the electrical signal; a marker signal generator for generating marker signals indicative of a location where velocity of the blood flow is measured and a direction of the ul- trasonic beam which contains the Doppler fre- quency shift components; an arithmetic circuit for calculating an angle theta defined between a direction of the blood flow and the direction of the ultrasonic beam which contains the Doppler frequency shift components; a divider circuit for obtaining the velocity of the blood flow in ac- cordance with the Doppler frequency shift com- ponents and the angle theta; and a display device for displaying a tomogram of the tissue and mar- kers in response to the tomogram signal and the marker signals, respectively.