ULTRASOUND TOMOGRAPH AND RING ANTENNA ARRAY FOR ULTRASOUND TOMOGRAPH Russian patent published in 2000 - IPC

FIELD: medical devices, in particular, investigation of breast, extremities and abdomen organs. SUBSTANCE: device has serial circuit of ring antenna array, which has receiving-emitting piezoelectric transducers, multiple-channel unit of receivers-transmitters with antenna commutator, multiple- channel analog-to-digital converter, unit for processing of received signals, image accumulation unit and tomography display unit. In addition device has rotating table with programmed control which carries ring antenna array, in which receiving-emitting piezoelectric transducers are spread in non-uniform distribution. Their number is less than number of scanning steps. Emitting shape of transducers is designed as cylinder with arc length greater than half wave of ultrasound acoustic pulse. Transducers are arranged according to nodes of antenna array. Numbers of angular positions of node conform to specific conditions. In addition ring antenna array for device has at least two groups of receiving-emitting piezoelectric transducers, so that transducers in one group have identical inclination angle with respect to plane that is perpendicular to axis of ring antenna array, while transducers in another group have different inclination angle ranging from, for example, -20 to +20 degrees. EFFECT: increased resolution for displaying soft tissues using small number of receiving-emitting transducers. 3 cl, 3 dwg