ULTRASOUND IMAGE CAPTURING DEVICE AND METHOD OF PROCESSING ULTRASOUND SIGNAL

摘要

A phased signal is obtained by setting a delay time appropriate to a received signal both inside and outside a region of irradiation by a transmission beam, without using an approximated wavefront propagation model. A reception beamformer includes: a wavefront propagation calculating unit 121 which obtains by calculation the times at which each of a plurality of ultrasound waves transmitted from a plurality of ultrasound elements arrive at a reception focal point; and a delay time extracting unit 122 which calculates a delay time for the reception focal point, on the basis of a distribution of the ultrasound wave arrival times for each of the plurality of ultrasound elements, obtained by the wavefront propagation calculating unit 121. Thus, even if the wavefront arriving at the reception focal point has a complex shape, it is not necessary to approximate the wavefront, and phasing and adding can be performed using an appropriate delay time obtained from the time at which the ultrasound wave arrives at the reception focal point.