Ultrasonic diagnosis apparatus for tissue characterization
First Claim
1. An ultrasonic apparatus for use in diagnosis, by transmitting an ultrasonic wave to a region in a body to be observed and by receiving and processing the reflected ultrasonic wave, said body having a plurality of small reflecting bodies dispersely distributed in said region, said apparatus comprising:
- ultrasonic means for transmitting said ultrasonic wave to said region and for receiving said reflected ultrasonic wave and for outputting a signal corresponding to said reflected ultrasonic wave;
extracting means for receiving said signal corresponding to said reflected ultrasonic wave, and for extracting at least one particular time section thereof corresponding to reflection of said ultrasonic wave from said region, and for providing a corresponding output; and
averaging means, receiving as an input the output of said extracting means, for determining an average period of scallopping in the power spectrum of the one particular time section of said reflected ultrasonic wave, said scallopping caused by the small reflecting bodies in said region.
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Abstract
A diagnosis apparatus for discriminating a property of the tissue to be observed from the reflected ultrasonic wave uses the nature of the fine structure of the tissue, and more practically uses the interval of small reflecting bodies dispersely distributed in the tissue as the parameters. The intervals flucatuate. Therefore, an average value and/or a degree of fluctuation is calculated and is displayed. For obtaining the average interval, a method of using the cepstrum of the received signal or a method of using the self-correlation of the received signal can be used.
32 Citations
14 Claims
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1. An ultrasonic apparatus for use in diagnosis, by transmitting an ultrasonic wave to a region in a body to be observed and by receiving and processing the reflected ultrasonic wave, said body having a plurality of small reflecting bodies dispersely distributed in said region, said apparatus comprising:
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ultrasonic means for transmitting said ultrasonic wave to said region and for receiving said reflected ultrasonic wave and for outputting a signal corresponding to said reflected ultrasonic wave; extracting means for receiving said signal corresponding to said reflected ultrasonic wave, and for extracting at least one particular time section thereof corresponding to reflection of said ultrasonic wave from said region, and for providing a corresponding output; and averaging means, receiving as an input the output of said extracting means, for determining an average period of scallopping in the power spectrum of the one particular time section of said reflected ultrasonic wave, said scallopping caused by the small reflecting bodies in said region. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)
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8. An ultrasonic diagnosis apparatus for use in diagnosis, by transmitting an ultrasonic wave to a region in a body to be observed and by receiving and processing the reflected wave, said body having a plurality of small reflecting bodies dispersely distributed in said region, said apparatus comprising:
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ultrasonic means for transmitting said ultrasonic wave to said region, for receiving said reflected ultrasonic wave and for providing a respective output signal corresponding to said reflected ultrasonic wave; extracting means for receiving said output signal from said ultrasonic means for extracting at least one particular time section thereof corresponding to reflection of said ultrasonic wave from said region, and for providing a corresponding output; spectrum means for receiving said output of said extracting means, and for providing an output corresponding to a power spectrum of said extracted time section, wherein said power spectrum demonstrates intervals of scallopping caused by the small reflecting bodies dispersely distributed in said region; averaging means for receiving said output of said spectrum means, and for providing an output corresponding to the average value of said intervals of scallopping in said power spectrum; and display means for receiving said output of said averaging means and for providing a display corresponding to said average value. - View Dependent Claims (9, 10)
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11. A method of determining a characteristic of tissue in a region having small reflecting bodies dispersely distributed therein, comprising the steps of:
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(a) transmitting an ultrasonic wave into the region and receiving the ultrasonic wave reflected from the small reflecting bodies as a received signal; (b) processing the received signal to obtain a cepstrum signal representing a cepstrum of the received signal; and (c) providing a peak quefrency signal by processing the cepstrum signal to determine a non-zero peak quefrency in the cepstrum, the non-zero quefrency corresponding to an average spacing interval of the small reflecting bodies. - View Dependent Claims (12, 13, 14)
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Specification