Patent application number | Description | Published |
20100069751 | SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR DETECTING REGIONS OF ALTERED STIFFNESS - An ultrasound imaging method for detecting a target region of altered stiffness is provided. The method comprises delivering at least one reference pulse to the target region to detect an initial position of the target region, delivering a first pushing pulse having a first value of a variable parameter to a target region to displace the target region to a first displaced position, delivering a first tracking pulse to detect the first displaced position of the target region, delivering a second pushing pulse having a second value of the variable parameter to the target region to displace the target region to a second displaced position, and delivering a second tracking pulse to detect the second displaced position of the target region. An ultrasound imaging system for detecting a region of altered stiffness is also provided. | 03-18-2010 |
20100113926 | SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR CLUTTER FILTER PROCESSING FOR IMPROVED ADAPTIVE BEAMFORMING - A method for clutter filter processing is provided. The method provides for extracting a blood component from an element signal produced by an element to obtain a filtered element signal, and extracting a blood component from a beamsum signal to obtain a filtered beamsum signal, calculating a time delay estimate between the filtered element signal and the filtered beamsum signal, or between the filtered element signal and the beam sum signal, or between the element signal and the filtered beamsum signal and applying the time delay estimate to correct transmit and receive beamforming time delays for the element. Systems and apparatus that afford functionality of the type defined by this method may be provided by the present technique. | 05-06-2010 |
20100191113 | SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR ULTRASOUND IMAGING WITH REDUCED THERMAL DOSE - An ultrasound imaging method is provided. The method includes identifying a plurality of locations within a region of interest, delivering a pulse sequence to two or more of the plurality of locations in a determined order, wherein the pulse sequence comprises a pushing pulse, and a tracking pulse, and applying a motion correction sequence to each of the plurality of locations where the pulse sequence is delivered. | 07-29-2010 |
20100286519 | ULTRASOUND SYSTEM AND METHOD TO AUTOMATICALLY IDENTIFY AND TREAT ADIPOSE TISSUE - An ultrasound imaging and therapy system that includes an ultrasound probe and an ultrasound diagnostic module to control the probe to obtain diagnostic ultrasound signals from a region of interest (ROI). The ROI includes adipose tissue and non-adipose tissue. The diagnostic module analyzes the diagnostic ultrasound signals and automatically differentiates adipose tissue from non-adipose tissue. The system also includes an ultrasound therapy module to control the probe to deliver, during a therapy session, a therapy at a treatment location based on a therapy parameter to the adipose tissue differentiated by the ultrasound diagnostic module. A method for delivering therapy to a region of interest (ROI) in a patient is also provided. | 11-11-2010 |
20100286520 | ULTRASOUND SYSTEM AND METHOD TO DETERMINE MECHANICAL PROPERTIES OF A TARGET REGION - An ultrasound system that is configured to determine whether adipose tissue of a patient received therapy at a treatment location. The system includes an ultrasound probe and a shear-wave-generating module to control the probe to provide a shear-wave beam that is configured to generate a shear wave at a first site within the patient. The shear wave is configured to propagate through the treatment location toward a second site within the patient. The system also includes a tracking module to control the probe to track the shear wave at the second site within the patient to determine if the treatment location received the therapy. | 11-11-2010 |
20100305438 | SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR SCALING STRAIN IMAGE DATA - A computer readable storage medium has a computer program stored thereon, which includes a set of instructions that when executed by a computer causes the computer to access positional data acquired from a material at a plurality of states of compression. The set of instructions also causes the computer to estimate a plurality of strain data sets from the positional data, each of the plurality of strain data sets corresponding to a different state of compression, and compare a first pair of strain data sets of the plurality of strain data sets with each other. The set of set of instructions further causes the computer to calculate a first measure of correlation from the comparison, scale a first strain data set of the first pair of strain data sets if the first measure of correlation is above a correlation threshold, and display the scaled first strain data set to a user. | 12-02-2010 |
20110144544 | ULTRASOUND TRANSDUCER ASSEMBLY AND METHODS OF USING - An ultrasound transducer assembly for adjustably directing a beam of ultrasound energy to a region of interest is provided. The ultrasound transducer assembly comprises a therapy transducer, a beam enhancement component that adjusts one or more parameters of the ultrasound beam, wherein the beam enhancement component is in operative association with the therapy transducer, and a component controller operatively coupled to the beam enhancement component for controlling the beam enhancement component. | 06-16-2011 |
20110148682 | PREDICTIVE ANALOG-TO-DIGITAL CONVERTER AND METHODS THEREOF - Predictive Analog-to-Digital Converter system in one embodiment includes a sampling section producing a sampled analog input signal with a first summer section combining the sampled analog input signal and an analog prediction signal to produce an analog prediction error signal. There is at least one error analog-to-digital convertor digitizing the analog prediction error signal, wherein a digital error signal output from the error analog-to-digital convertor is one of a full bitwidth error signal during an over-range condition else a lower bitwidth error signal. A second summer is coupled to the digital error signal output and a digital prediction signal, and generates a full bitwidth digital output signal. A feedback section is coupled to the digital output signal and providing the digital prediction signal and the analog prediction signal. | 06-23-2011 |
20110245676 | METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR ULTRASOUND SIGNAL ACQUISITION AND PROCESSING - The present disclosure relates to the measurement of acoustic noise during ultrasound imaging. In one embodiment, a receive beam is directed in a different direction from a transmit beam when an acoustic noise signal is being measured. When a tissue signal is being measured, the receive beam is directed in substantially the same direction as the transmit beam. | 10-06-2011 |
20120130246 | METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR CORRECTING ULTRASOUND DATA - A method for correcting ultrasound data includes acquiring ultrasound data using an ultrasound probe having a plurality of transducer elements associated with a plurality of channels that include conductive pathways and communicating the ultrasound data as received ultrasound signals along the conductive pathways of the channels. The method further includes determining a crosstalk signal that is generated in one or more of the channels by at least one of communication of the received ultrasound signals along the channels or vibration of one or more of the transducer elements. In one aspect, the method also includes modifying one or more subsequently acquired ultrasound signals that are communicated along the channels based on the crosstalk signal. | 05-24-2012 |
20120158323 | METHODS AND SYSTEMS FOR IMPROVED CORRELATION OF SHEAR DISPLACEMENT WAVEFORMS - Methods and systems for improving correlation of shear displacement waveforms are presented. The method includes delivering one or more reference pulses to a plurality of target regions to detect corresponding initial positions. Further, a plurality of pushing pulse segments are delivered to one or more pushing locations, where one or more parameters corresponding to the plurality of pushing pulse segments are adapted for generating a shear displacement waveform with a desired wave shape. Additionally, one or more tracking pulses may be delivered to the plurality of target regions for detecting displacements of at least a subset of the target regions as a function of time. Particularly, the displacements are determined as time samples of the shear displacement waveform. Subsequently, a shift between the shear displacement waveform detected at least two different target regions in the subset of the plurality of target regions is detected. | 06-21-2012 |
20130197366 | SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR INTRAVASCULAR ULTRASOUND IMAGING - Embodiments of catheters, imaging systems and methods for intravascular ultrasound imaging are presented. At least one miniaturized transducer element adapted to be inserted into a vascular structure and configured to produce signals for use in generating one or more ultrasound images of a desired region within the vascular structure is used. Further, one or more apodizing structures operably coupled to the transducer element and configured to decrease the responsiveness of the transducer element at one or more boundaries of the transducer element with respect to the center of the transducer element are used. Particularly, the apodizing structures reduce sidelobe amplitude of an ultrasound beam profile in the region of interest, thereby generating improved ultrasound images. | 08-01-2013 |
20140200455 | SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR INVERTED BEAMFORMING - Systems and methods for time-delay inverted beamforming are provided. One method includes sampling, substantially uniformly in time, a set of continuous-time element signals to form a set of sampled element signals and mapping, for each sampled element signal, one or more samples substantially equally spaced in time to one or more samples non-equally spaced in time corresponding to the respective contribution of each element signal to a continuous-time beamsum signal. The method also includes forming a beamsum signal sampled substantially uniformly in time from the non-uniformly spaced, mapped samples corresponding to each sampled element signal. | 07-17-2014 |