An ultrasonic sensing module, an ultrasonic sensing device and a control method thereof, and a display device. The ultrasonic sensing module includes a first electrode layer, a piezoelectric layer, a receiving electrode layer and an emission electrode layer. The first electrode layer is on a first side of the piezoelectric layer; the receiving electrode layer and the emission electrode layer insulated from the receiving electrode layer are on a second side of the piezoelectric layer; and the second side is opposite to the first side.

An ultrasound system is described which produces blended fundamental and harmonic frequency images. Successively transmitted, differently modulated pulses are transmitted by an ultrasound probe and both fundamental and harmonic frequencies are received in response. The echo signals received from the two pulses are processed by pulse inversion, producing cleanly separated bands of fundamental and harmonic signals in which undesired components have been cancelled. Since the two bands have been separated by signal cancellation rather than filtering, the two bands are allowed to overlap, providing broadband signals in each band. The bands are filtered by bandpass filtering to define the fundamental and harmonic signals to be imaged. The signals are detected, and the detected signals are combined after weighting to produce a blended fundamental/harmonic image.

An ultrasound beamformer architecture performs the task of signal beamforming using a matrix of analog random access memory cells to capture, store and process instantaneous samples of analog signals from ultrasound array elements and this architecture provides significant reduction in power consumption and the size of the diagnostic ultrasound imaging system such that the hardware build upon this ultrasound beamformer architecture can be placed in one or few application specific integrated chips (ASIC) positioned next to the ultrasound array and the whole diagnostic ultrasound imaging system could fit in the handle of the ultrasonic probe while preserving most of the functionality of a cart-based system. The ultrasound beamformer architecture manipulate analog samples in the memory in the same fashion as digital memory operates that can be described as an analog store—digital read (ASDR) beamformer. The ASDR architecture provides improved signal-to-noise ratio and is scalable.

An ultrasound probe includes a plurality of transducer elements configured to transmit ultrasound waves to an object and receive ultrasound echo signals corresponding to the transmitted ultrasound waves from the object, wherein the plurality of transducer elements are classified to be included in a plurality of first sub-arrays, a plurality of first analog beamformers configured to generate first synthesized signals by performing first beamforming on each of the ultrasound echo signals received by the plurality of transducer elements included in each of the plurality of the first sub-arrays, and a second analog beamformer configured to generate a second synthesized signal by performing second beamforming on the first synthesized signals generated by the plurality of first analog beamformers.

An imaging system includes transmit circuitry, a transducer array with an array of capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer elements, a beamformer, a decoder and a display. The transmit circuitry includes a signal generator and at least one excitation coding scheme. The transmit circuitry combines an excitation signal generated by the signal generator with an excitation coding scheme of the at least one excitation coding scheme, generating a coded excitation signal. The array of transducer elements is excited with the coded excitation signal to emit ultrasound signals. The coding scheme does not introduce heating on the capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer elements. The array of ultrasonic transducer elements receives echo signals produced in response to the ultrasound signals interacting with structure and generates electrical signals indicative thereof. The beamformer beamforms the electrical signals, the decoder removes the coding from the beamformed signals, and the display displays an image with the decoded signals.

Receive signals generated by ultrasound waves propagating in completed manner in a depth direction of a subject, are efficiently subjected to delay-and-sum processing, whereby a higher resolution image is generated with reducing a circuit size. Receive signals outputted from multiple ultrasound probe elements are delayed by predetermined delay amounts in association with the depths of receive focal points, respectively, and the delayed receive signal is branched. The phase of the branched receive signal is shifted by a predetermined phase shift amount to generate a phase-compensated signal, and then the phase-compensated signal is added to the receive signal before branched, thereby generating a beamformed signal.

Aspects of the technology described herein relate to control circuitry configured to turn on and off the ADC driver. In some embodiments, the control circuitry is configured to turn on and off the ADC driver in synchronization with sampling activity of an ADC, in particular based on when an ADC is sampling. The control circuitry may be configured to turn on the ADC driver during the hold phase of the ADC a time period before the track phase and to turn off the ADC driver during the hold phase a time period after the track phase. In some embodiments, the control circuitry is configured to control a duty cycle of the ADC driver turning on and off. In some embodiments, the control circuitry is configured to control a ratio between an off current and an on current in the ADC driver.

A hand-held ultrasound system includes integrated electronics within an ergonomic housing. The electronics includes control circuitry, beamforming and circuitry transducer drive circuitry. The electronics communicate with a host computer using an industry standard high speed serial bus. The ultrasonic imaging system is operable on a standard, commercially available, user computing device without specific hardware modifications, and is adapted to interface with an external application without modification to the ultrasonic imaging system to allow a user to gather ultrasonic data on a standard user computing device such as a PC, and employ the data so gathered via an independent external application without requiring a custom system, expensive hardware modifications, or system rebuilds. An integrated interface program allows such ultrasonic data to be invoked by a variety of such external applications having access to the integrated interface program via a standard, predetermined platform such as visual basic or c++.

Aspects of the technology described herein related to an ultrasound processing unit (UPU) including gray-coding circuitry configured to convert standard binary-coded digital ultrasound signals to gray-coded digital ultrasound signals and gray-decoding circuitry coupled to the gray-coding circuitry and configured to convert the gray-coded digital ultrasound signals to standard binary-coded digital ultrasound signals. The UPU may include an analog portion, a digital portion, and a data bus configured to route the gray-coded digital ultrasound signals from the analog portion to the digital portion subsequent to converting the standard binary-coded digital ultrasound signals to the gray-coded digital ultrasound signals. The analog portion may include multiple analog front-ends (AFEs), the gray-coding circuitry, and an analog-to-digital converter. The digital portion may include the gray-decoding circuitry. A data bus from one AFE may pass over another AFE.

Aspects of the present disclosure provide ultrasound systems and devices that provide for reduction of reverberation artifacts in ultrasound images by automatically changing imaging settings such as PRI or transmit/receive configuration based on detected amounts of reverberation in ultrasound images. In an exemplary embodiment, an apparatus includes a processor circuit in communication with an ultrasound probe. The processor circuit obtains a plurality of ultrasound images obtained using a plurality of different PRIs and/or pulse sequences, calculates an amount of reverberation artifacts in each of the plurality of ultrasound images, selects a pulse repetition interval and/or pulse sequence based on the amounts of reverberation artifacts in each of the plurality of ultrasound images, and controls the ultrasound transducer to obtain a reduced-reverberation ultrasound image using the selected pulse repetition interval or pulse sequence. The reduced-reverberation ultrasound image is then output to a display.