An acoustic, preferably ultrasonic, wave emission and/or reception device, including a wave emitter configured to transmit waves at an emission frequency, and a receiver of preferably ultrasonic waves, separate from the emitter, having a resonance frequency, and configured to receive waves generated by the emitter and including direct waves and reflected waves, wherein the device includes a resonance frequency modulator of the receiver and a control unit configured to control the resonance frequency modulator during a predetermined time period, so as to reduce the sensitivity of the receiver during the predetermined time period by moving the resonance frequency of the receiver away from the emission frequency of the emitter. The acoustic device relates to the field of ultrasonic sensors, particularly PMUTs or CMUTs, having a high quality factor.

An ultrasound system includes a transducer array configured to generate analog ultrasound signals. The system includes one or more analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) in communication with the transducer array. The ADCs is configured to convert the analog ultrasound signals to digital ultrasound signals. The system includes a processor circuit in communication with the ADCs. The processor circuit includes digital in-phase/quadrature (I/Q) mixers configured to generate digital continuous wave (CW) Doppler signals based on the digital ultrasound signals. The processor circuit is configured to process the digital CW Doppler signals, generate a graphical representation of a distribution of blood flow velocities over a plurality of cardiac cycles, and output the graphical representation to a display in communication with the processor circuit.

The present invention related to an ultrasound imaging system win which the scan head includes a beamformer circuit that performs far field subarray beamforming or includes a sparse array selecting circuit that actuates selected elements. When using a hierarchical two-stage or three-stage beamforming system, three dimensional ultrasound images can be generated in real-time. The invention further relates to flexible printed circuit boards in the probe head. The invention furthermore related to the use of coded or spread spectrum signaling in ultrasound imagining systems. Matched filters based on pulse compression using Golay code pairs improve the signal-to-noise ratio thus enabling third harmonic imaging with suppressed sidelobes. The system is suitable for 3D full volume cardiac imaging.

This disclosure provides a system and method for producing ultrasound images based on Full Waveform Inversion (FWI). The system captures acoustic/(an)elastic waves transmitted through and reflected and/or diffracted from a medium. The system performs an FWI process in a time domain in conjunction with an accurate wave propagation solver. The system produces 3D maps of physical parameters that control wave propagation, such as shear and compressional wavespeeds, mass density, attenuation, Poisson's ratio, bulk and shear moduli, impedance, and even the fourth-order elastic tensor containing up to 21 independent parameters, which are of significant diagnostic value, e.g., for medical imaging and non-destructive testing.

An optomechanical ultrasound detector includes: a micromirror substrate; a mechanical resonator that receives ultrasound waves, oscillates at resonator frequency f.sub.r, changes cavity length L.sub.c, and produces intra-cavity light; and an optical microcavity between the micromirror substrate and the mechanical resonator with cavity length Lc and cavity resonance frequency f.sub.c formed by the mechanical resonator and the micromirror substrate, such that the micromirror substrate produces cavity output light from the intra-cavity light, wherein the cavity output light optically encodes information about the ultrasound waves received by the mechanical resonator.

A method of configuring a touch sensor includes transmitting an ultra-sonic test signal induced by a first excitation signal towards a touch structure that has a first interface with an enclosed interior volume of the touch sensor and a second interface with an external environment; receiving a plurality of ultra-sonic reflected signals produced from the ultra-sonic test signal and the touch structure, including a first ultra-sonic reflected signal internally reflected by the first interface and a last ultra-sonic reflected signal internally reflected by the second interface; determining a last time of flight corresponding to the last ultra-sonic reflected signal; and selectively configuring a second excitation signal based on the last time of flight. The second excitation signal is used for inducing further ultra-sonic signals.

A piezoelectric micro-machined ultrasonic transducer (PMUT) is provided, comprising a dedicated ultrasonic transmitter and at least one separate dedicated ultrasonic receiver on a single common semiconductor die. A plurality of PMUTs may be arranged in a tessellated array. Also disclosed is a system comprising at least one PMUT on a single common semiconductor die, a dedicated ultrasonic transmitter arranged to transmit a first ultrasonic signal and at least one separate dedicated ultrasonic receiver arranged to receive a second ultrasonic signal is also provided. The system further comprises a signal processing subsystem which comprises an analogue domain; a digital domain; a digital to analogue converter; and an analogue to digital converter. The signal processing subsystem is arranged to generate an estimated direct path signal in said digital domain, convert said estimated direct path signal to an analogue estimated direct path signal using said digital to analogue converter, subtract said analogue estimated direct path signal from said second signal to produce a modified received signal and convert said modified received signal to a digital modified received signal using said analogue to digital converter.

An ultrasound diagnosis apparatus according to an embodiment includes an ultrasound probe and processing circuitry. The ultrasound probe includes a plurality of transducer elements arranged two-dimensionally and includes a plurality of transducer element groups of a Row-Column Addressing type in which, when ultrasound transmission is to be performed, a plurality of first transducer elements arranged in the direction of one of two axes intersecting each other are connected in common to one another and in which, when ultrasound reception is to be performed, a plurality of second transducer elements arranged in the direction of the other of the two axes are connected in common to one another. A plurality of sets that are each made up of the two axes and correspond to the plurality of transducer element groups of the Row-Column Addressing type are mutually different.

Techniques are described herein that are capable of providing a modularized acoustic probe that includes multiple acoustic transducers that have discrete substrates. A first acoustic transducer is configured to generate an acoustic signal and to transmit the acoustic signal toward an object. The second acoustic transducer is configured to detect a reflected acoustic signal, which results from the acoustic signal reflecting from the object, and to convert the reflected acoustic signal to an electrical signal. The first and second acoustic transducers have respective discrete substrates. In an example, the second acoustic transducer may not be configured to generate acoustic signals. In another example, the first and second acoustic transducers may be in respective first and second rows of a two-row transducer array. In accordance with this example, the first and second acoustic transducers may be designed to have an acoustic parameter having respective first and second parameter values.

Techniques, systems, and devices are disclosed for synthetic aperture ultrasound imaging using spread-spectrum, wide instantaneous band, coherent, coded waveforms. In one aspect, a method includes synthesizing a composite waveform formed of a plurality of individual orthogonal coded waveforms that are mutually orthogonal to each other, correspond to different frequency bands and including a unique frequency with a corresponding phase; transmitting an acoustic wave based on the composite waveform toward a target from one or more transmitting positions; and receiving at one or more receiving positions acoustic energy returned from at least part of the target corresponding to the transmitted acoustic waveforms, in which the transmitting and receiving positions each include one or both of spatial positions of an array of transducer elements relative to the target and beam phase center positions of the array, and the transmitted acoustic waveforms and the returned acoustic waveforms produce an enlarged effective aperture.