A method for estimating an ultrasonic attenuation parameter of a region in a medium includes a transmission step in which at least one pulse is transmitted in the medium by a transducer, and a reception step in which data is acquired by a transducer in response to the pulse. The method includes a processing step in which the data is processed by the processing unit for providing backscattered acquisition data of the region, and a function determination step in which an auto-correlation function of the backscattered acquisition data is determined which is a function of depth in the spatio-temporal domain, the autocorrelation function being determined at a lag of zero. The method includes an attenuation estimation step in which an ultrasonic attenuation parameter is estimated based on said auto-correlation function. The method is implemented by a processing unit associated to at least one ultrasound transducer.

The present invention concerns a pulse wave image reconstruction method to be used for example in ultrasound imaging. The proposed method is based on an image measurement model and its adjoint operator. The proposed method introduces matrix-free formulations of the measurement model and its adjoint operator. The proposed method has the advantage that the reconstructed image has a very high quality and that it can be reconstructed quickly.

The present invention concerns an array processing image reconstruction method comprising: receiving a set of echo waveforms as measurements from the object of interest; defining a measurement model linking an unknown image of the object to the measurements; defining a data fidelity functional using the measurement model; defining a regularisation functional using a trained non-linear mapping, the regularisation functional comprising prior knowledge about the unknown image; defining an optimisation problem involving the data fidelity functional and the regularisation functional for obtaining a first image estimate of the unknown image; and solving the optimisation problem to obtain the first image estimate.

A method of real time three dimensional (3D) sonar imaging is disclosed, where large array of sonar signal detectors images an underwater object and electromagnetic measuring means fixed in a known position with respect to the large array of sonar detectors measure the position of an above water object which has a known position with respect to the underwater object. The position of the sonar detector may be corrected to give a stable image of the underwater object from ping to ping of the sonar imaging system.

An ultrasound imaging apparatus includes: a processor; and a storage. The storage is configured to store first-type reference data corresponding to a first observation target and second-type reference data corresponding to a second observation target. The processor is configured to transmit, to an ultrasound probe, a signal for making the ultrasound probe transmit an ultrasound wave to an observation target, receive an echo signal, perform frequency analysis based on the echo signal to calculate a frequency spectrum, obtain reference data, correct the frequency spectrum using the reference data, calculate a feature based on the corrected frequency spectrum, when the observation target is the first observation target, obtain the first-type reference data as the reference data, and when the observation target is the second observation target, obtain the second-type reference data as the reference data.

An ultrasound imaging apparatus includes a processor including hardware. The processor is configured to: generating first frequency spectrum data and second frequency spectrum data with regard to a first ultrasound signal and a second ultrasound signal, respectively; generating first ultrasound image data based on the first ultrasound signal; generating second ultrasound image data based on the second ultrasound signal; estimating a displacement amount including at least one of a positional change amount and a rotation angle of a subject depicted in the first ultrasound image data with respect to the subject depicted in the second ultrasound image data; correcting the first frequency spectrum data in accordance with the estimated displacement amount; calculating differential feature data by using the corrected first frequency spectrum data and the second frequency spectrum data; and generating analysis image data to which color information corresponding to the differential feature data is applied.

The present invention aims to obtain and provide one or more types of information desired by an operator with a high efficiency. From a probe that transmits an ultrasonic wave to a subject and receives the ultrasonic wave coming from the subject due to the transmission, a reception signal is received and the reception signal is processed. Accordingly, a movement vector indicating a movement amount and a movement direction is calculated and a movement vector distribution is determined for a plurality of points set at least two-dimensionally in the subject. A distribution of one or more desired movement vector components is extracted from the movement vector distribution.

A discrete wavelet transform-based noise removal apparatus and a remote medical diagnosis system using the same. The discrete wavelet transform-based noise removal apparatus can effectively remove noise from various medical images including ultrasound images, images indicative of results of biological or chemical reaction on a bio-disc, images obtained by medical devices, and images for telemedicine.

An ultrasound diagnostic apparatus 1 includes an image acquisition unit 17 that acquires an ultrasound image of a subject a bladder extraction unit 18 that extracts a bladder from the ultrasound image; a prostate extraction unit 19 that extracts a prostate or cervix from the ultrasound image from which the bladder is extracted; a region-of-interest setting unit 20 that sets a region of interest at a depth position in the ultrasound image based on a position of the extracted prostate or cervix in a case where the prostate or cervix is extracted and that sets a region of interest at a depth position in the ultrasound image based on a position of the extracted bladder in a case where the prostate or cervix is not extracted; and an image quality adjustment unit 21 that adjusts the transmission/reception condition according to the depth position of the region of interest.

A method for ultrafast compound plane wave imaging based on a broadband acoustic metamaterial: controlling the transmit-receive ultrasonic probe to emit an ultrasonic signal at a preset transmit frequency and a first preset transmit angle, the preset transmit frequency is equal to a response frequency of the acoustic metamaterial structure; controlling the transmit-receive ultrasonic probe to receive, at a preset receive frequency and separately at a first preset receive angle, a second preset receive angle, a third preset receive angle, echo signals reflected by a measured object, where the preset receive frequency is n times the preset transmit frequency, the first preset receive angle is equal to the first preset transmit angle, the second preset receive angle is smaller than the first preset transmit angle, the third preset receive angle is larger than the first preset transmit angle; using the echo signals to reconstruct an image of the measured object.