An ultrasound diagnostic apparatus of the present invention includes: a transmitter that generates and outputs a plurality of drive signals to a transducer of an ultrasound probe, the drive signals causing the transducer to transmit a plurality of transmission ultrasound waves that have different waveforms in a temporally shifted manner, the drive signals being compensated for asymmetry of the transmission sound pressure waveforms of the plurality of transmission ultrasound waves transmitted from the transducer; and a hardware processor configured to extract a harmonic component according to a plurality of reception signals, and generating an ultrasound image based on the extracted harmonic component.

A diagnostic ultrasound image of a region of interest (ROI) of a body is formed by transmitting into the ROI at least a first and a second ultrasound pulse, in which the second pulse is phase-shifted relative to the first pulse by an amount other than 0 or a multiple of 180 degrees. Discretized receive signals from the pulses are interleaved to form a resultant operating signal that is detected and beamformed as the operating signal.

Systems and methods for performing diagnostic sonography. Ultrasound information of a subject region can be collected. The ultrasound information can be based on one or more exponentially swept ultrasound chirp pulses transmitted toward the subject region and backscatter of the subject region from the one or more exponentially swept ultrasound chirp pulses. One or more corresponding harmonic responses and a corresponding fundamental response for each of the one or more exponentially swept ultrasound chirp pulses can be separated from the ultrasound information. Further, one or more non-linear properties of the subject region can be identified based on either or both of the one or more corresponding harmonic responses and the corresponding fundamental response for each of the one or more exponentially swept ultrasound chirp pulses.

An ultrasound diagnostic apparatus including an ultrasound probe which outputs transmission ultrasound corresponding to a drive signal, which receives reflected ultrasound from the subject and which outputs a received signal according to the reflected ultrasound; a drive signal outputter which outputs the drive signal to the ultrasound probe; a hardware processor which controls the drive signal outputter to output a first drive signal having a first drive waveform and a second drive signal having a second drive waveform that is different from the first drive waveform; a received signal generator which generates a first received signal based on the reflected ultrasound corresponding to the transmission ultrasound that is output based on the first drive signal and a second received signal based on the reflected ultrasound corresponding to the transmission ultrasound that is output based on the second drive signal; and an extractor which extracts by arithmetic of the first received signal and the second received signal a received signal component which to be used in imaging. Frequency spectrums of the first drive signal and the second drive signal have a first intensity peak on a low frequency side of a center frequency of the transmission frequency, a second intensity peak on a high frequency side of the center frequency and a third intensity peak at a frequency between a frequency corresponding to the first intensity peak and a frequency corresponding to the second intensity peak, in a frequency band included in a transmission frequency band at −20 dB of the ultrasound probe.

Provided are an ultrasonic imaging method and device, and a storage medium. The ultrasonic imaging method includes: acquiring an ultrasonic echo signal; segmenting the ultrasonic echo signal into a first predetermined number of sub-echo signals according to scan depths; performing amplitude apodization on each sub-echo signal with a predetermined window function to obtain processed sub-echo signals; completing ultrasonic imaging according to the processed sub-echo signals. At least one sub-echo signal is subjected to the follow processing: segmenting the at least one sub-echo signal into a second predetermined number of unit echo signals according to the scan depths, and assigning a weighting coefficient to each unit echo signal; performing amplitude apodization on each unit echo signal with the corresponding predetermined window function, and weighting the unit echo signals with corresponding weighting coefficients to obtain processed unit echo signals; and forming a processed sub-echo signal from the processed unit echo signals.

An ultrasound diagnostic apparatus including an ultrasound probe which outputs transmission ultrasound corresponding to a drive signal, which receives reflected ultrasound from the subject and which outputs a received signal according to the reflected ultrasound; a drive signal outputter which outputs the drive signal to the ultrasound probe; a hardware processor which controls the drive signal outputter to output a first drive signal having a first drive waveform and a second drive signal having a second drive waveform that is different from the first drive waveform; a received signal generator which generates a first received signal based on the reflected ultrasound corresponding to the transmission ultrasound that is output based on the first drive signal and a second received signal based on the reflected ultrasound corresponding to the transmission ultrasound that is output based on the second drive signal; and an extractor which extracts by arithmetic of the first received signal and the second received signal a received signal component which to be used in imaging. Frequency spectrums of the first drive signal and the second drive signal have a first intensity peak on a low frequency side of a center frequency of the transmission frequency, a second intensity peak on a high frequency side of the center frequency and a third intensity peak at a frequency between a frequency corresponding to the first intensity peak and a frequency corresponding to the second intensity peak, in a frequency band included in a transmission frequency band at −20 dB of the ultrasound probe.

Systems and methods for ultrasound imaging using a delay-encoded harmonic imaging (“DE-HI”) technique is provided. An ultrasound pulse sequence is coded using temporal delays between ultrasound emissions within a single transmission event. This coded scheme allows for harmonic imaging to be implemented. The temporal time delay-codes are applied temporally to multiple different ultrasound emissions within a single transmission event, rather than spatially across different transmitting elements. The received radio frequency (“RF”) signals undergo a decoding process in the frequency domain to recover the signals, as they would be obtained from standard single emissions, for subsequent compounding. As one specific example, a one-quarter period time delay can be used to encode second harmonic signals from each angle emission during a single multiplane wave (“MW”) transmission event, rather than inverting the polarity of the pulses as in conventional MW imaging.

A system and method include control of an ultrasound system transducer to acquire an echo signal power spectrum of a region of tissue for a fundamental frequency band and an echo signal power spectrum of the region of tissue for a harmonic frequency band, wherein a center frequency of the harmonic frequency band is substantially similar to a center frequency of the fundamental frequency band, determination of a first backscatter coefficient based on the echo signal power spectrum of the region of tissue for a fundamental frequency band and an echo signal power spectrum of a reference phantom for the fundamental frequency band, determination of a value representing a second backscatter coefficient and a non-linearity term associated with the region of tissue based on the echo signal power spectrum of the region of tissue for the harmonic frequency band and an echo signal power spectrum of the reference phantom for the harmonic frequency band, determination of the non-linearity term associated with the region of tissue based on the first backscatter coefficient and the value, and display the second backscatter coefficient, the non-linearity term, and a B-mode image of the region of tissue.

An ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus according to an embodiment includes a candidate-position extracting circuitry and a position setting circuitry. The candidate-position extracting circuitry extracts a first position through comparison of a fundamental wave component between a plurality pieces of image data collected by performing ultrasonic scanning on a subject injected with a contrast agent. The candidate-position extracting circuitry also extracts a second position through comparison of a harmonic component between the pieces of image data. The position setting circuitry sets the first position or the second position as a position of a region of interest where predetermined analysis is performed in at least one image data of the pieces of image data.

Estimation and imaging of linear and nonlinear propagation and scattering parameters in a material object where the material parameters for wave propagation and scattering has a nonlinear dependence on the wave field amplitude. The methods comprise transmitting at least two pulse complexes composed of co-propagating high frequency (HF) and low frequency (LF) pulses along at least one LF and HF transmit beam axis, where said HF pulse propagates close to the crest or trough of the LF pulse along at least one HF transmit beam, and where one of the amplitude and polarity of the LF pulse varies between at least two transmitted pulse complexes. At least one HF receive beam crosses the HF transmit beam at an angle >20 deg to provide at least two HF cross-beam receive signals from at least two transmitted pulse complexes with different LF pulses. The HF cross-beam receive signals are processed to estimate one or both of i) a nonlinear propagation delay (NPD), and ii) a nonlinear pulse form distortion (PFD) of the transmitted HF pulse for said cross-beam observation cell.