Surgery – Diagnostic testing – Detecting nuclear – electromagnetic – or ultrasonic radiation
Reexamination Certificate
2000-01-10
2001-03-27
Jaworski, Francis J. (Department: 3737)
Surgery
Diagnostic testing
Detecting nuclear, electromagnetic, or ultrasonic radiation
Reexamination Certificate
active
06206833
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
This invention generally relates to ultrasonic pulse echo imaging, and more specifically, to ultrasonic pulse echo imaging based on the distortion of ultrasonic signals transmitted into samples.
Ultrasonic pulse echo imaging is widely used in many medical applications. While this technique has received wide acceptance, it would be desirable to improve the resolution of the images formed from this technique. For example, ultrasonic pulse echo imaging in inhomogeneous media suffers from significant lateral and contrast resolution losses due to the defocusing effects of the inhomogeneities of the media. The losses in lateral and contrast resolution are associated with increases in the width of the main beams and increases in side lobe levels, respectively.
These two forms of resolution loss represent a significant hurdle to improving the clinical utility of biomedical ultrasonic imaging. A number of research efforts are currently underway to investigate the defocusing effects of tissue and to consider corrective measures. These efforts, however, generally assume linear propagation and base the image-formation process on the reception of the transmitted pulse.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
An object of this invention is to improve ultrasonic imaging and methods.
Another object of the present invention is to improve the resolution of images formed from ultrasonic echo signals.
A further object of this invention is to utilize the enhanced inhomogeneous focusing properties of the finite amplitude distortion generated higher harmonics of an ultrasonic imaging beam in order to obtain improved contrast resolution and lateral resolution images.
These and other objectives are obtained with a method and system for imaging a sample. The method includes the steps of generating an ultrasonic signal, directing the signal into a sample, which signal is distorted and contains a first order and higher order component signals at first and higher frequencies respectively. The received distorted signal is processed, and an image is formed, and then displayed, from one of the higher order component signals of the received distorted signal.
With the preferred embodiment of the invention disclosed herein in detail, the ultrasonic image is based on one of the received finite amplitude distortion component (or nonlinearly-generated higher harmonics) associated with the transmitted signal. In the simplest case, in which the transducer emits negligible energy in the second harmonic bandwidth, such an image can be formed by adding an initial high pass filtering of the received signal. In general, such an image can be formed by using a two pulse transmit, receive, normalize, and then high pass filtering scheme. Such a two pulse scheme can be used to remove the source or linear content in the second and higher harmonic bandwidths.
Further benefits and advantages of the invention will become apparent from a consideration of the following detailed description given with reference to the accompanying drawings, which specify and show preferred embodiments of the invention.
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Jaworski Francis J.
Research Corporation Technologiers, Inc.
Scully Scott Murphy & Presser
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