Surgery – Truss – Pad
Patent
1996-10-03
1997-09-23
Manuel, George
Surgery
Truss
Pad
A61B 800
Patent
active
056693842
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
TECHNICAL FIELD
The present invention relates to a method for focusing a reception signal which is reflected from an object and an apparatus adopting the same, and more particularly to a real time processing method of digital reception focusing in an ultrasound imaging system or beam focusing system which uses an array transducer, and an apparatus adopting the same.
BACKGROUND ART
In the field of a modern medical science, ultrasound diagnosis has been well advanced and became a general, essential diagnostic technology. Such ultrasound diagnostic equipment becomes digitized and integrated due to an engineering technological development on its design and implementation, thereby accomplishing compactness, light and high efficiency. To improve lateral resolution which is a crucial factor among performances of the ultrasound diagnostic equipment, a method of focusing transmission and reception waves by using an array transducer is widely used. Particularly, a reception focusing portion which is used in focusing a reception wave is very complex, so that a number of researches on performance improvement has been progressed. Such researches are shown in the following references Sampling Techniques" by J. E. Powers, D. J. Phillips, M. A. Brandestini and R. A. Sigelmann disclosed in IEEE Trans. Son. Ultrason., vol. SU-27, Images" by P. A. Maginin, O. T. Von Ramm and F. L. Thurstone disclosed in "Beam Steering with Linear Arrays" by O. T. Von Ramm and S. W. Smith disclosed in IEEE Trans. Son. Biomed. Eng., vol. BME-30, no. 8, pp. Imaging" by G. Manes, P. Tortoli, F. Andreuccetti, G. Avitabile and C. Atzeni disclosed in IEEE Trans. UFFC. vol. 35, no. 1, pp. 14-21, 1988. The reception focusing portion should be made of an integrated circuit (IC) to achieve compactness and high efficiency. A number of researches for digitizing the reception focusing portion are shown in the following Imaging Systems" by J. H. Kim, T. K. Song and S. B. Park disclosed in IEEE Phased Array System for Dynamic Focusing and Steering with Reduced Sampling Rate" by T. K. Song and S. B. Park disclosed in IEEE Trans. Ultrason. Imag., vol. 12, pp. 1-16, 1990. digital reception focusing portion are a digital delay device, a digital full-adder, a sampling clock generator, etc. Among them, the sampling clock generator is generally comprised of a large-capacity, high-speed look-up table (LUT) memory in the form of a read-only-memory (ROM). Thus, it has been very difficult in implementing all three portions such as a digital delay device, a digital full-adder, and a sampling clock generator into an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC).
DISCLOSURE OF INVENTION
Therefore, to solve the above problems, it is an object of the present invention to provide a new method and apparatus for calculating focusing delay on a real time basis with a sufficient accuracy via a simple hardware implementation without using a look-up table memory as a sampling clock generator.
To accomplish the above object of the present invention, there is provided a real time digital reception focusing method for sampling a signal having image information on an object received via an array transducer having a plurality of transducing elements and for performing a digital reception focusing of the sample image information, the real time digital reception focusing method comprising the steps of:
establishing an integer focusing reference distance and an integer focusing delay distance with respect to each of the transducing elements so that a rate of change of the focusing delay distance with respect to the focusing reference distance when a focal point is altered is within a predetermined boundary;
updating the integer focusing reference distance and the integer focusing delay distance with respect to a second focal point according to a magnitude of a decision variable with respect to a first focusing point and coefficients for calculating the decision variable; and
generating a sampling clock for focusing a signal having the image information input to each of the transd
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PCT International Search Report, International Application No. PCT/KR96/00016, Date of Completion of Search--May 24, 1996, Sheets 1, 2 and Annex.
Bae Moo Ho
Jeon Ki
Park Song Bai
Manuel George
Medison Co. Ltd.
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