An ultrasonic probe includes: a plurality of transducers that perform electro-acoustic conversion on transmission pulses applied thereto to generate a transmission beam of ultrasonic waves; and transmission/reception circuits that are provided so as to correspond to each of the plurality of transducers. The transmission/reception circuits set transmission/reception switching timings at which the ultrasonic waves are switched from transmission to reception independently for each of the plurality of transducers.

Aspects of the technology described herein related to monitoring fetal heartbeat and uterine contraction signals. An ultrasound system may be configured to sweep a volume to collect ultrasound data, detect a fetal heartbeat and/or uterine contraction signal in the ultrasound data, and automatically steer an ultrasound beam to monitor the fetal heartbeat and/or uterine contraction signal. The ultrasound system may be further configured to determine a location where the fetal heartbeat and/or uterine contraction signal is detectable or detectable at a highest quality. The ultrasound system may include a wearable ultrasound device, such as an ultrasound patch coupled to a subject. The wearable ultrasound device may have a two-dimensional array of ultrasonic transducers capable of steering ultrasound beams in three dimensions.

A transducer array for ultrasound applications includes a plurality of transducer elements that are provided with self-aligned connections to a flexible cable. The array is easy to manufacture and suited for wearable, wireless, and other small ultrasound devices. A simple and efficient method of producing a robust transducer array involves at least partially separating the transducer elements after their connection to their respective conductors.

An embodiment of wearable imaging system implements a set of sensors distributed around the joint of a user with advanced software machine learning techniques to deliver accurate measurements of bone-to-bone displacement and angle. A first subset of the distributed sensors emit ultrasound signals towards the joint of the user and a second subset detects ultrasound signals traveling through and reflected off structures of the joint. A controller of the wearable imaging system extracts physiological properties of the joint from the detected ultrasound signals. The controller inputs the physiological properties of the joint and properties of the detected ultrasound signals to a machine-learned displacement model to generate a bone displacement measurement at the joint.

In backscatter coefficient imaging, a backscatter coefficient of one region of interest relative another region of interest is used to avoid calibration. The system effects are removed by using a frequency-dependent measure of the backscatter. The relative frequency-dependent backscatter coefficient is determined by an ultrasound scanner.

An ultrasound device (10) is disclosed comprising a transducer arrangement (110) and an acoustically transmissive window (150) over said arrangement, said window comprising an elastomer layer (153) having conductive particles dispersed in the elastomer, the elastomer layer having a pressure-sensitive conductivity, the ultrasound device further comprising an electrode arrangement (160) coupled to said elastomer layer and adapted to measure said pressure-sensitive conductivity. An ultrasound system and arrangement including such an ultrasound device are also disclosed.

A handheld ultrasound device may comprise components configured to provide decreased size, weight, complexity, and power consumption. The handheld ultrasound device may comprise a beamformer configured to implement and compress a flag table in place of a delay table. These improvements can decrease the amount of memory used to generate ultrasound images, which can decrease the size, weight, and power consumption of the handheld ultrasound device. Ultrasound image data on a handheld imaging probe can be compressed on the handheld imaging probe prior to transmission from the probe in order to decrease the amount of data transmitted from the probe. The compressed data may comprise compressed pixels to maintain spatial image resolution. The compression circuitry may comprise an amount of memory related to a dynamic range of the compressed data that is independent of the dynamic range of the input data, which can decrease memory, power consumption, and latencies.

In order to estimate a temperature of a transmission-reception wavefront of a probe head, a first computing unit and a second computing unit are provided. The first computing unit estimates a temperature TA of the transmission-reception wavefront according to a basic function based on an internal temperature T1, an ambient temperature T2, power consumption Ptotal (=Pic+Ptd), and any other parameter. The basic function is a linear function. The second computing unit estimates a temperature TB of the transmission-reception wavefront according to an auxiliary function based on a previously estimated temperature Tpre, an internal temperature difference ΔT1, and any other, parameter. A selection unit selects any of the temperatures TA and TB depending on situations.

An example monitoring device for detecting and measuring a vital sign of a subject includes: a base; a battery mounted to the base; first and second transceivers attached to the base at opposing angles, and powered by the battery to transmit pulses and receive reflected pulses; an antenna powered by the battery, and configured to wirelessly transmit data acquired from the first and second transceivers; and a computing device powered by the battery, and operatively coupled to the first and second transceivers and the antenna, the computing device having a processing device and a memory storing instructions that, when executed by the processing device, cause the monitoring device to determine a respiration rate by detecting a cyclical change in distance based on the reflected pulses.

An apparatus for correcting a posture of an ultrasound scanner for artificial intelligence-type ultrasound self-diagnosis, includes an ultrasound scanner including an ultrasound probe configured to acquire and transmit an ultrasound image of a patient; a mapper configured to acquire a body map of the patient in which a plurality of virtual interested organs is arranged on a body image; a scanner navigator configured to calculate current position coordinates of the ultrasound scanner on the body map and the ultrasound image; augmented reality glasses configured to display the ultrasound image and a virtual object image; and a processor configured to determine whether the patient has a disease and a risk degree of the disease based on an artificial neural network result of an implemented deep learning neural network trained on ultrasound training images provided with the ultrasound image.