Bernard Savord

Sub-beamforming apparatus and method for a portable ultrasound imaging system

A sub-beamforming method and apparatus are applied to a portable, one-dimensional ultrasonic imaging system. The sub-beamforming circuitry may be included in the probe s assembly housing the ultrasonic transducer, thus minimizing the number of signals that are communicated between the probe assembly and the portable processor included in the imaging system. Including the sub-beamformer in the probe assembly also relieves the portable processor of some of the signal processing tasks. The sub-beamforming apparatus may be implemented digitally or may be implemented using analog components.

Aberration correction apparatus and methods

An ultrasound system and method for aberration correction processing in conjunction with finely pitched transducer elements and/or aberration correction processing in conjunction with a hierarchical control scheme. Results obtained from known aberration correction algorithms may be improved with the use of finely pitched transducer elements wherein the pitch of the elements (or subgroup of elements) is less than or equal to the wavelength of an ultrasound signal at the fundamental frequency. Elements of a transducer may be grouped into subgroups with aberration correction algorithms being applied to the output of each subgroup.