Ultrasonic imager having wide-bandwidth dynamic focusing
US5488588A · kind A · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | Sep 7, 1994 |
| Grant date | Jan 30, 1996 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Sep 7, 2014 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC G)Physics
- CPC primaryG10K11/345
- WIPO fieldMeasurement
- WIPO sectorInstruments
Abstract
An ultrasonic imaging system provides dynamic focusing by using dynamic group delay in addition to dynamic phase focus. FIFO memory storage capacity in the beamforming circuit is increased to provide improved resolution of the data samples stored therein. These samples are selected by an address counter in response to both the advance of time and the accumulation of a phase advance clock count. After a Read Start signal, indicating the start of a beam, is supplied to the FIFO memory, the FIFO memory address is advanced, on each read instruction, by the number of address locations corresponding to the period of a pipeline channel. In addition, the address is incremented whenever the accumulated count of a phase advance clock exceeds an amount corresponding to the smallest increment of the data stored in the FIFO memory.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.