An ultrasonic diagnostic device includes: a probe including a plurality of elements; a transmission unit that transmits an ultrasonic beam by performing transmission focusing in a first direction from the plurality of elements; a reception unit that generates element data by processing reception signals output from the plurality of elements that has received an ultrasonic echo generated by the transmitted ultrasonic beam; an element data processing unit that generates reflection component removal data by removing a reflection component generated from the first direction from the element data; an image generation unit that generates an ultrasonic image by performing reception focusing for the element data; and a control unit that controls the image generation unit to generate an image signal along a second direction different from the first direction by performing reception focusing in the second direction for the reflection component removal data generated by the element data processing unit.

Disclosed is a method and related systems comprising detecting a position of each of two or more targets in a volume to be imaged; generating and directing a single beam of ultrasound energy toward the volume by simultaneously focusing the single beam on each of the two or more the target positions; detecting the ultrasound energy from each of the two or more the target positions; and using the detected ultrasound energy to generate an image of the volume to be imaged. Such as generating a blood flow profile in a blood vessel.

An ultrasound system according to the present disclosure may include a beamformer configured to perform per-channel weighting on the RF signals received at each channel in order to reduce noise clutter in the image. For this purpose, the beamformer may receive at one or more channels associated with an active aperture, sets of receive signals associated with respective transmit beams that at least partially overlap. The beamformer may alter the receive space, e.g., to align the sets of receive signals to a common location (e.g., between the transmit beams) and generate a coherence-based weighting value that may be indicative of blockage. The coherence-based weighting value may be applied on a per-channel basis to the receive signals. The beamformer may also communicate the coherence metric to the controller for altering the transmit space. In some such examples, the power output to one or more elements of the array may be adjusted based upon the per-channel weighting value or determined blockage of the aperture.

An ultrasound imaging system includes a transducer array (202) with a plurality of transducer elements (206) configured to transmit a pulsed field beam into a scan field of view, receive echo signals produced in response to the pulsed field interacting with particles/structure flowing/moving in the scan field of view, and generate electrical signals indicative of the echo signals. The ultrasound imaging system further includes a beamformer (212) including multiple synthetic transmit aperture beamformers configured to process the electrical signals over a plurality of processing channels (312) into corresponding receive-beams of RF-data with a beam-level delay, channel-level delays, a beam-level gain and channel-level gains. The ultrasound imaging system further includes a velocity processor (216) configured to estimate a flow velocity of the structure flowing in the scan field of view from the RF-data. The ultrasound imaging system further includes a rendering engine (224) configured to display the flow velocity estimate on a display (226) with color-coding.

Systems and methods for performing shear wave elastography using push and/or detection ultrasound beams that are generated by subsets of the available number of transducer elements in an ultrasound transducer. These techniques provide several advantages over currently available approaches to shear wave elastography, including the ability to use a standard, low frame rate ultrasound imaging system and the ability to measure shear wave speed throughout the entire field-of-view rather than only those regions where the push beams are not generated.

An ultrasonic diagnostic device includes: a probe including a plurality of elements; a transmission unit that transmits an ultrasonic beam by performing transmission focusing in a first direction from the plurality of elements; a reception unit that generates element data by processing reception signals output from the plurality of elements that has received an ultrasonic echo generated by the transmitted ultrasonic beam; an element data processing unit that generates reflection component removal data by removing a reflection component generated from the first direction from the element data; an image generation unit that generates an ultrasonic image by performing reception focusing for the element data; and a control unit that controls the image generation unit to generate an image signal along a second direction different from the first direction by performing reception focusing in the second direction for the reflection component removal data generated by the element data processing unit.

According to one embodiment, an ultrasound diagnostic apparatus includes a transmitter/receiver and processing circuitry. The transmitter/receiver sequentially transmits a first transmission beam group and a second transmission beam group and receives at least one reception beam for each transmission beam, via an ultrasound probe having a plurality of transducers arranged along an azimuth direction and an elevation direction. The processing circuitry combines a first reception beam based on a first transmission beam included in the first transmission beam group and a second reception beam based on a second transmission beam included in the second transmission beam group. Transmission beams that are adjacent to each other in the azimuth direction or the elevation direction belong to transmission beam groups that are different from each other.

A method of generating an image of a scanned subject includes: emitting, by multiple ultrasonic elements of an array, multiple respective ultrasonic signals into a subject, the multiple respective ultrasonic signals defining at least two beam portions traveling in different directions; receiving, by the multiple ultrasonic elements, multiple respective ultrasonic echo signals; and generating at least one image of a portion of the subject from the received multiple ultrasonic echo signals. A negatively focused wavefront including the at least two beam portions traveling in the different directions may be emitted. Multiple negatively focused wavefronts may be generated and emitted.

The invention is to provide an ultrasonic image with a clear tissue structure while reducing speckle noise of the ultrasonic image. An ultrasonic wave is transmitted from the transducer to the subject, and an echo generated in the subject is received. The first ultrasonic image and the second ultrasonic image are generated using a reception signal. The second ultrasonic image is an image smoother than the first ultrasonic image. The image processing unit calculates filter coefficients using pixel values of corresponding pixels of the first ultrasonic image and the second ultrasonic image, and generates an output image by processing one of the first ultrasonic image and the second ultrasonic image using the filter coefficients.

Systems and methods for enhancing spatial specificity and increasing effective image acquisition speed by performing flow processing on channel data for application of nonlinear beamforming are provided. The method includes generating clutter filtered signals, delaying the clutter filtered signals to provide delay aligned clutter filtered signals, calculating coherency of the delay aligned clutter filtered signals, and nonlinearly combining the delay aligned clutter filtered signals and the coherency of the delay aligned clutter filtered signals across each transducer element at one or more depths to generate at least one beamformed signal for each received set of echo signals in a sequence of echo signals at the one or more depths. The method includes calculating and presenting a measurement for the one or more depths based on the at least one beamformed signal for each received set of echo signals in the sequence of echo signals at the one or more depths.