System and method for non-contact manipulation of objects via ultrasonic levitation are presented herein. In one embodiment, a method for a non-contact manipulation of an object includes: generating ultrasound field by an array of ultrasound transducers; lifting the object off a dispensing device by the ultrasound field; and levitating the object by the ultrasound field.

A method includes transmitting a focused ultrasound wave into a medium to form (i) an ultrasound intensity well within the medium that exhibits a first range of acoustic pressure and (ii) a surrounding region of the medium that surrounds the ultrasound intensity well and exhibits a second range of acoustic pressure that exceeds the first range of acoustic pressure. The method further includes confining an object within the ultrasound intensity well. Additionally, an acoustic lens is configured to be acoustically coupled to an acoustic transducer. The acoustic lens has a varying longitudinal thickness that increases proportionally with respect to increasing azimuth angle of the acoustic lens. Another acoustic lens is configured to be acoustically coupled to an acoustic transducer. The acoustic lens includes a plurality of segments. Each of the plurality of segments has a varying longitudinal thickness that increases proportionally with respect to increasing azimuth angle of the segment.

A handheld ultrasound device comprises a plurality of components configured to provide decreased size, weight, complexity and power consumption. The handheld ultrasound device may comprise an ultrasound transducer and an analog to digital (“A/D”) converter coupled to the ultrasound transducer. A processor comprising a beamformer can be coupled to the A/D converter and configured to selectively store a plurality of signals from the A/D converter in a memory of the processor. The beamformer can be 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.

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.

In accordance with one aspect of the present disclosure, an ultrasound imaging apparatus comprising: an ultrasonic probe for transmitting ultrasonic waves to a target object and receiving ultrasonic waves reflected from the object; a beamforming unit for beamforming the received ultrasonic wave and outputting a beamforming signal; a sampling unit for adjusting the number of sampling times of the beamforming signal according to the amount of motion of the object; and an image processing unit for matching and synthesizing the sampled signals.

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.

Ultrasound signal processing device including: transmitter performing transmission events while varying a focal point; receiver generating, for each transmission event, receive signal sequences for transducer elements; delay-and-sum calculator generating, for each transmission event, a sub-frame acoustic line signal including an acoustic line signal for each measurement point located on target lines passing through the focal point and composing a target line group; and synthesizer combining sub-frame acoustic line signals to generate a frame acoustic line signal. The target lines are straight lines, and any measurement point, on any target line, that is spaced away from the focal point by a predetermined distance or more satisfies a condition that distance between the measurement point and a most nearby measurement point on the same target line is smaller than distance between the measurement point and a most nearby one among measurement points on an adjacent target line.

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.

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.

Disclosed are methods to manipulate a given parametrized haptic curve in order to yield a smooth phase function for each acoustic transducer which minimizes unwanted parametric audio. Further, the impulse response of a haptic system describes the behavior of the system over time and can be convolved with a given input to simulate a response to that input. To produce a specific response, a deconvolution with the impulse response is necessary to generate an input.