METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR REDUCING ULTRASONIC SPECKLE USING WIDE-BAND FREQUENCY COMPOUNDING WITH TISSUE-GENERATED HARMONICS

摘要

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To enable discrimination of tissue reducing the amount of speckle in ultrasound images. SOLUTION: This apparatus transmits two or more firings to coherently combine the two or more firings to extract a harmonic component generated in tissue and detects output of the coherent sum and one or more firings before the coherent sum. Finally, all the detected outputs are combined to form a compounded image. The apparatus also sums up a wide-band basic wave image and a wide-band harmonic image to form a compounded image. Furthermore, transmitted signals and received signals are both wide-band signals in this apparatus different from other frequency compounding methods, dispensing with narrow-band filter and multiple firings in two or more different transmitted waveforms are transmitted to respective focal zones. COPYRIGHT: (C)2004,JPO&NCIPI