ULTRASOUND TRANSDUCER PROBE WITH MICROBEAM FORMER FOR MULTILINE IMAGING Russian patent published in 2018 - IPC A61B8/00 G01S15/89 G01S7/52 

FIELD: medicine.

SUBSTANCE: invention relates to medical equipment, in particular to medical ultrasound systems. Multiline imaging system with an ultrasonic transducer probe comprises an array of transducer elements configured as a plurality of adjacent patches of transducer elements, a microbeam former coupled to the transducer elements of the array, comprising plurality of controllable delay lines (DL1, DL2, DL3) coupled to elements of the array to produce delayed echo signals, a plurality of controllable switches coupled to direct delayed echo signals to summing node (Σ) of a given patch, or to a summing node of a patch adjacent to the given patch, a microbeam former output coupled from each summing node; and a system beam former having a plurality of channels, each channel being coupled to receive a partial beam sum signal from a microbeam former output. Array of transducer elements is configured to transmit a beam centered on a predetermined patch, the first plurality of controllable switches is arranged to direct signals from the elements located on the first side from the centre of the beam to the summing node of a predetermined patch, the second plurality of controllable switches is arranged to direct signals from the elements located on the second side from the centre of the beam to the summing node of the adjacent patch, and the beam former of the system is configured to process the signals of the sum beams received from the patches to generate multiline signals.

EFFECT: use of the invention makes it possible to increase the density of scan lines.

8 cl, 8 dwg