MEASUREMENT AND IMAGING INSTRUMENTS AND BEAMFORMING METHOD

• US 20190129026A1
• Filed: 04/12/2018
• Published: 05/02/2019
• Est. Priority Date: 06/04/2015
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Chikayoshi Sumi, Waylens, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Waylens, Inc.
• Inventors: SUMI, Chikayoshi, YAMAZAKI, Naoto
• Granted Patent: US 11,125,866 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 6/00 Apparatus or devices for radiation diagnosis; Apparatus or devices for radiation diagnosis combined with radiation therapy equipment instruments measuring radiation intensity for application in the field of nuclear medicine, e.g. in vivo counting, G01T1/161; apparatus for taking X-ray photographs G03B42/02
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 8/00 Diagnosis using ultrasonic, sonic or infrasonic waves imaging of objects using sonar G01S15/00
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 8/4488 the transducer being a phased array
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 15/89 for mapping or imaging
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 15/8915 using a transducer array
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 15/8997 using synthetic aperture techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 17/90 using synthetic aperture techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 7/52019 Details of transmitters
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 7/52023 Details of receivers
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 7/52025 for pulse systems G01S7/52034 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 7/52033 Gain control of receivers for seismic signals G01V1/245
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 7/52038 involving non-linear properties of the propagation medium or of the reflective target
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 7/52039 exploiting the non-linear response of a contrast enhancer, e.g. a contrast agent diagnostic techniques involving the use of contrast agents A61B8/481
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 7/52041 detecting modification of a contrast enhancer, e.g. detecting the destruction of a contrast agent by an acoustic wave, e.g. loss of correlation diagnostic techniques involving the use of contrast agents A61B8/481
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 7/52046 Techniques for image enhancement involving transmitter or receiver image enhancement by image data processing G06T5/00
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 7/52047 for elimination of side lobes or of grating lobes; for increasing resolving power

Abstract

A measurement and imaging instrument capable of beamforming with high speed and high accuracy without approximate calculation. The instrument includes a reception unit which receives a wave arriving from a measurement object to generate a reception signal; and an instrument main body which performs a lateral modulation while superposing two waves in a two-dimensional case and three or four waves in a three-dimensional case in beamforming processing of the reception signal in which at least one wave arriving from the measurement object is processed as being transmitted or received in the axial direction or directions symmetric with respect to the axial direction to generate a multi-dimensional reception signal, performs Hilbert transform with respect to the multi-dimensional reception signal, and performs partial derivative processing or one-dimensional Fourier transform to generate analytic signals of the multi-dimensional reception signals of the two waves or the three or four waves.

Claims

1. A measurement and imaging instrument comprising:

reception means configured to receive, when at least one wave is transmitted from at least one wave source positioned in an arbitrary direction to a measurement object, a wave arriving from the measurement object by using at least one reception aperture element to generate at least one reception signal; and

an instrument main body configured to perform a lateral modulation in beamforming processing of the at least one reception signal generated by the reception means to generate a multi-dimensional reception signal, and perform a Hilbert transform with respect to the generated multi-dimensional reception signal,

wherein the instrument main body performs the lateral modulation while superposing two waves in a two-dimensional case and three or four waves in a three-dimensional case in an orthogonal coordinate system using coordinates of an axial direction determined by a direction of an aperture of an arbitrary reception aperture element array and at least one lateral direction orthogonal to the axial direction in the beamforming processing in which at least one wave arriving from the measurement object is processed as being transmitted or received in the axial direction or directions symmetric with respect to the axial direction, and performs a partial derivative processing or a one-dimensional Fourier transform in the axial or lateral direction to generate analytic signals of the respective multi-dimensional reception signals of the two waves in the two-dimensional case and the three or four waves in the three-dimensional case.