Efficient architecture for 3d and planar ultrasonic imaging-synthetic axial acquisition and method thereof

Abstract

An improved device and method for collecting data used for ultrasonic imaging. The data is gathered over numerous transmit and echo receive cycles, or iterations and combined into a synthetic acquisition representing a complete echo characteristic acquisition. At each iteration, only a portion, or subset, of the echo characteristic is sampled and stored. During the iterations, the portion of the echo characteristic that is measured and sampled is varied by changing the relative sampling instants. That is, the time offset from the transmission to the respective sampling instant is varied. The sample sets representative of the entire echo characteristic are then compiled from the multiple subsets of the ultrasonic transmissions.

1 . A method of obtaining a plurality of pulse echo sample sets at a plurality of ultrasonic transducer array elements, each pulse echo sample set being representative of an echo characteristic for use in ultrasound imaging using propagation delay compensation signal processing; the steps comprising:
 (i) performing data collection iterations by transmitting an ultrasonic pulse, and at each iteration:
 (a) receiving a pulse echo at a plurality of array elements, and 
 (b) at each of the plurality of array elements, obtaining a pulse echo sample subset at a respective time offset, wherein the time offset is varied between successive iterations; and 
   (ii) for each of the plurality of array elements, aggregating the pulse echo sample subsets of varied offsets into a single synthesized composite pulse echo sample set that is representative of an echo signal.   
     
     
         2 - 30 . (canceled)