Method and apparatus for beamformer system with variable aperture
US5617862A · kind A · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | May 2, 1995 |
| Grant date | Apr 8, 1997 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | May 2, 2015 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC G)Physics
- CPC primaryG01S15/8979
- WIPO fieldMeasurement
- WIPO sectorInstruments
Abstract
An ultrasonic scanner imaging system includes connections to one or more transducer arrays of at least M elements each, a transmit beamformer with N processors, and a receive beamformer with N processors. Separate transmit and receive multiplexers permit switching between transmit firings to any contiguous N-element transmit or receive aperture completely within a transducer array or straddled across two arrays. The transmit and receive apertures for a given firing may be independently placed and are not required to coincide. Such flexibility supports random aperture placement, sliding aperture acquisitions, and synthetic aperture acquisitions. The multiplexers also permit shorting adjacent transducer elements to enable 2N elements to be used in conjunction with N-channel transmit/receive beamformers. Beamforming to create synthetic apertures of P*N<=M elements are accomplished with the multiplexing arrangement by coherently summing the receive beamformer pre-detected output from at least P acquisition firings.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.