| 摘要 |
When multiple tissues having differing speeds of sound are intermixed in the viewing field of a measured subject such as a living body, the invention measures hardness, such as modulus of elasticity or viscosity, with high precision. As a means for detecting heterogeneity of sound speed in the tissues of a subject, a displacement-generating transmission beam is applied from a displacement generating beam-generating unit (13) of a displacement-generating unit (10) on an ultrasound probe (1) to irradiate a focused ultrasonic wave into the living tissue and generate a shear wave. From the displacement-time waveforms of multiple positions of the shear wave detected using the displacement detection transmission beam-generating unit (22) and the displacement detection received beam-computing unit (23) of a displacement-detecting unit (20), at least two pieces of information, such as the integrated value and the maximum amplitude value, are obtained. On the basis of the two pieces of information, a heterogeneity-detecting unit (26) of the displacement-detecting unit (20) detects the physical magnitude associated with the heterogeneity in sound speed arising from the tissue structure and displays same on a display unit (5). |
