Communications – electrical: acoustic wave systems and devices – Transmitter systems – With beam forming – shaping – steering – or scanning
Reexamination Certificate
1999-10-12
2001-01-09
Pihulic, Daniel T. (Department: 3662)
Communications, electrical: acoustic wave systems and devices
Transmitter systems
With beam forming, shaping, steering, or scanning
C007S158000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06172939
ABSTRACT:
REFERENCE TO MICROFICHE APPENDIX
This application includes a microfiche appendix of 195 sheets of microfiche having 19,058 frames. A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material which is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by any one of the patent disclosure, as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent files or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever.
CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS
This application is related to:
a. METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR RECEIVE BEAMFORMER SYSTEM, Wright et al., Attorney Docket No. 5055-77 U.S. Pat. No. 5,685,308;
b. METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR FOCUS CONTROL OF TRANSMIT AND RECEIVE BEAMFORMER SYSTEMS, Gee et al., Attorney Docket No. 5055-79 U.S. Pat. No. 5,581,517;
c. METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR DOPPLER RECEIVE BEAMFORMER SYSTEM, Maslak et al., Attorney Docket No. 5055-80 U.S. Pat. No. 5,555,534;
d. METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR ADJUSTABLE FREQUENCY SCANNING IN ULTRASOUND IMAGING, Wright et al., Attorney Docket No. 5055-83 U.S. Pat No. 5,549,111;
e. METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR A BASEBAND PROCESSOR OF A RECEIVE BEAMFORMER SYSTEM, Wright et al., Attorney Docket No. 5055-84 U.S. Pat. No. 5,928,152;
f. METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR BEAMFORMER SYSTEM WITH VARIABLE APERTURE, Cole et al., Attorney Docket No. 5055-85 U.S. Pat. No. 5,617,862.
The above patent applications are all commonly assigned with the present application, filed concurrently with the present application, and are all incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.
The present application is also related to the following previously filed applications:
a. METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR REAL-TIME, CONCURRENT ADAPTIVE FOCUSING IN AN ULTRASOUND BEAMFORMER IMAGING SYSTEM, Wright et al., Ser. No. 08/286,528, filed Aug. 5, 1994 U.S. Pat. No. 5,570,691;
b. METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR A GEOMETRIC ABERRATION TRANSFORM IN AN ADAPTIVE FOCUSING ULTRASOUND BEAMFORMER SYSTEM, Wright et al., Ser. No. 08/286,664, filed Aug. 5, 1994 U.S. Pat. No. 5,551,433;
c. METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR COHERENT IMAGE FORMATION, Wright et al., Ser. No. 08/286,510, filed Aug. 5, 1994 (abandoned).
I. FIELD OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates to coherent imaging systems including, for example, radar, sonar, seismic, and ultrasound systems, using vibratory energy, and in particular, but not limited to, phased array ultrasound imaging systems for scan formats such as linear, steered linear, sector, circular, Vector®, steered Vector® and other types of scan formats in imaging modes such as, by way of example only, B-mode (gray-scale imaging mode), F-mode (flow or color Doppler imaging mode), M-mode (motion mode) and D-mode (spectral Doppler mode). Although the invention will be discussed with respect to an ultrasound system, the invention can be implemented with other types of coherent imaging systems.
II. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
A. Literature
The open literature, which presents issues relevant to imaging systems in general, includes the following documents which are incorporated herein by reference:
1. Dan E. Dudgeon, “Fundamentals of Digital Array Processing,”
Proceedings of the IEEE,
volume 65, pp. 898-904, June 1977.
2. Dan E. Dudgeon and Russell M. Mersereau,
Multidimensional Digital Signal Processing,
Chapter 6, Section 2: “Beamforming,” Prentice Hall, 1984.
3. William C. Knight, Roger G. Pridham, and Steven M. Kay, “Digital Signal Processing for Sonar,”
Proceedings of the IEEE,
volume 69, pages 1451-1506, November 1981. (Digital beamformers for use in sonar described on pages 1465-1471.)
4. Roger G. Pridham and Ronald A. Mucci, “A Novel Approach to Digital Beamforming,”
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America,
volume 63, pages 425-434, February 1978.
5. Roger G. Pridham and Ronald A. Mucci, “Digital Interpolation Beamforming for Low-Pass and Bandpass Signals,”
Proceedings of the IEEE,
volume 67, pages 904-919, June 1979.
6. P. Barton, “Digital Beamforming for Radar,”
IEE Proceedings,
volume 127, part F, number 4, August 1980.
7. P. D. Carl, G. S. Kino, C. S. Desilets and P. M. Grant, “A Digital Synthetic Focus Acoustic Imaging System,”
Acoustic Imaging,
volume 8, pp. 39-53, 1978.
8. B. D. Steinberg, “Digital Beamforming in Ultrasound,”
IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control,
volume 39, pp. 716-721, November 1992.
9. Hans Steyskal, “Digital Beamforming Antennas,”
Microwave Journal,
volume 30, No. 1, pp. 107-124, January 1987.
10. R. E. Crochiere and L. R. Rabiner, “Multirate Digital Signal Processing,” Chapter 2, Prentice Hall, 1983.
B. Analog and Hybrid (Analog-Digital) Beamformer Systems
Relevant analog and hybrid (analog-digital) phased array beamformer system art can be found in the following patents which are incorporated herein by reference:
U.S. Pat. No.:
Title:
Inventor(s):
4,140,022
MULTIPLE
Samuel H. Maslak
TRANSDUCER
ACOUSTIC IMAGING
APPARATUS
4,550,607
PHASED ARRAY
Samuel H. Maslak
ACOUSTIC IMAGING
J. Nelson Wright
SYSTEM
4,699,009
DYNAMICALLY
Samuel H. Maslak
FOCUSED LINEAR
Hugh G. Larsen
PHASED ARRAY
ACOUSTIC IMAGING
SYSTEM
5,014,710
STEERED LINEAR
Samuel H. Maslak
and
COLOR DOPPLER
Donald J. Burch
5,165,413
IMAGING
J. Nelson Wright
Hugh G. Larson
Donald R. Langdon
Joel S. Chaffin
Grant Flash, III
C. Digital Receive Beamformer Systems
The concept of a digital receive beamformer system has been proposed in the art with respect to ultrasound systems. By way of example, the following U.S. patents, all of which are incorporated herein by reference, discuss various aspects of such systems. The patents include:
U.S. Pat. No.:
Title:
Inventor(s):
4,809,184
METHOD AND
Matthew O'Donnell
APPARATUS FOR
Mark Magrane
FULLY DIGITAL BEAM
FORMATION IN A
PHASED ARRAY
COHERENT IMAGING
SYSTEM
4,839,652
METHOD AND
Matthew O'Donnell
APPARATUS FOR HIGH
William E. Engeler
SPEED DIGITAL
Thomas L. Vogelsong
PHASED ARRAY
Steven G. Karr
COHERENT IMAGING
Sharbel E. Noujaim
SYSTEM
4,886,069
METHOD OF, AND
Matthew O'Donnell
APPARATUS FOR,
OBTAINING A
PLURALITY OF
DIFFERENT RETURN
ENERGY IMAGING
BEAMS RESPONSIVE
TO A SINGLE
EXCITATION EVENT
4,893,284
CALIBRATION OF
Mark G. Magrane
PHASED ARRAY
ULTRASOUND PROBE
4,896,287
CORDIC COMPLEX
Matthew O'Donnell
MULTIPLIER
William E. Engeler
4,975,885
DIGITAL INPUT STAGE
Dietrich Hassler
FOR AN ULTRASOUND
Erhard Schmidt
APPARATUS
Peter Wegener
4,983,970
METHOD AND
Matthew O'Donnell
APPARATUS FOR
William E. Engeler
DIGITAL PHASED
John J. Bloomer
ARRAY IMAGING
John T. Pedicone
5,005,419
METHOD AND
Matthew O'Donnell
APPARATUS FOR
Kenneth B. Welles, II
COHERENT IMAGING
Carl R. Crawford
SYSTEM
Norbert J. Plec
Steven G. Karr
5,111,695
DYNAMIC PHASE
William E. Engeler
FOCUS FOR COHERENT
Matthew O'Donnell
IMAGING BEAM
John T. Pedicone
FORMATION
John J. Bloomer
5,142,649
ULTRASONIC IMAGING
Matthew O'Donnell
SYSTEM WITH
MULTIPLE,
DYNAMICALLY
FOCUSED TRANSMIT
BEAMS
5,230,340
ULTRASOUND
Theador L. Rhyne
IMAGING SYSTEM
WITH IMPROVED
DYNAMIC FOCUSING
5,235,982
DYNAMIC TRANSMIT
Matthew O'Donnell
FOCUSING OF A
STEERED ULTRASONIC
BEAM
5,249,578
ULTRASOUND
Sidney M. Karp
IMAGING SYSTEM
Raymond A. Beaudin
USING FINITE IMPULSE
RESPONSE DIGITAL
CLUTTER FILTER WITH
FORWARD AND
REVERSE
COEFFICIENTS
The basic feature of a digital receive beamformer system as disclosed above can include: (1) amplification of the ultrasound signal received at each element of an array such as, for example, a linear array; (2) direct per channel analog-to-digital conversion of the ultrasound signal with an analog-to-digital sampling rate at least twice the highest frequency in the signal; (3) a digital memory to provide delays for focusing; and (4) digital summation of the focused signals from all the channels. Other processing features of a receive beamformer system can include phase rotation of a receive signal on a channel-by-channel basis to provide fine focusing, amplitude scaling (apodization) to control the beam sidelobes, and digital filtering to control the bandwidth of the signal.
D. Transmit Beamforming
The above literature point
Cole Christopher R.
Gee Albert
Liu Thomas
Acuson Corporation
Brinks Hofer Gilson & Lione
Pihulic Daniel T.
LandOfFree
Method and apparatus for transmit beamformer system does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this patent.
If you have personal experience with Method and apparatus for transmit beamformer system, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Method and apparatus for transmit beamformer system will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFUS-PAI-O-2518850