MATERIAL HARDNESS DISTRIBUTION DISPLAY SYSTEM AND MATERIAL HARDNESS DISTRIBUTION DISPLAY METHOD

摘要

A material hardness distribution display system (10) includes a probe unit (20) formed by a plurality of probe elements (22) which are two-dimensionally arranged.  Each of the probe elements (22) has an oscillator (26) for introducing oscillation into a biological tissue and an oscillation detection sensor (28) which detects a reflected wave.  The probe elements (22) are successively selected by a switch circuit (50) and connected to a hardness calculation unit (70) and a measurement depth calculation unit (82).  The hardness calculation unit (70) executes a frequency component analysis on the incident wave signal to the oscillator (26) and the reflected wave signal from the oscillation detection sensor (28) and calculates the hardness of the biological tissue according to the analysis result.  The measurement depth calculation unit (82) calculates the measurement depth inside the biological tissue at the position where the hardness has been measured, according to the temporal position of the incident wave signal and the temporal position of the reflected wave signal.  These are correlated to the respective probe elements (22).