DIAGNOSTIC ULTRASOUND APPARATUS AND ELASTICITY EVALUATION METHOD

摘要

Provided is a technology that reduces the deterioration of measurement precision and reproducibility due to long measurement times in measurement of shear wave velocity in radiation pressure elastography and is capable of acquiring ultrasound images of high diagnostic value. In radiation pressure elastography, while detecting shear waves from echo signals due to irradiation of a tracking pulse, information relating to the movement (fluctuation) of a measurement region is extracted and is provided to the user as reliability information representing the degree of reliability of the measurement results. From the extracted information, the cause of the fluctuation is also specified and presented to the user. Moreover, when arithmetically averaging measurement results of multiple runs, weighting is performed using the reliability information.