US 11,986,354 B2
Ultrasonic apparatus for medical examination using ultrasonic waves
Oliver Heid, Erlangen (DE)
Assigned to H-NEXT GMBH, Erlangen (DE)
Appl. No. 16/970,751
Filed by H-Next GmbH, Erlangen (DE)
PCT Filed Jan. 25, 2019, PCT No. PCT/EP2019/051848
§ 371(c)(1), (2) Date Aug. 18, 2020,
PCT Pub. No. WO2019/179675, PCT Pub. Date Sep. 26, 2019.
Claims priority of application No. 10 2018 204 357.4 (DE), filed on Mar. 21, 2018.
Prior Publication US 2021/0093299 A1, Apr. 1, 2021
Int. Cl. A61B 8/08 (2006.01); A61B 8/00 (2006.01); G01S 15/89 (2006.01)
CPC A61B 8/5207 (2013.01) [A61B 8/4472 (2013.01); A61B 8/4494 (2013.01); A61B 8/56 (2013.01); G01S 15/8915 (2013.01)] 10 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. An ultrasonic apparatus for medical examination using ultrasonic waves, comprising:
a computer device including:
a raw data buffer memory configured to buffer digital raw data; and
a control data buffer memory configured to buffer digital control data; and
a movable transducer probe coupled to the computer device by a digital data inte rface, the movable transducer probe configured to be positioned on a body of a patient and including:
a transducer array of electroacoustic transducers configured to transmit ultrasonic signals into the body and to receive, as analog raw data, ultrasonic echoes of the transmitted ultrasonic signals;
an analog-to-digital converter (CON) directly coupled to the computer device via the digital data interface to directly stream the digital raw data to the computer device, the CON configured to generate the digital raw data in dependence on the received analog raw data,
wherein the digital raw data is unbeamformed data to be stored in the raw data buffer memory and comprise measurement data sets for temporally consecutive measurement time intervals, wherein a respective measurement data set comprises ultrasonic echoes from a tissue sector of the body, which result from a transmitting operation of one or more ultrasonic signals by at least one transducer in a transmitting mode, as samples for sampling instants of the respective measurement time interval for a plurality of receiving channels from, respectively, at least one transducer in a receiving mode; and
a high voltage transmitter configured to read out digital control data from the control data buffer memory directly via the digital data interface or an additional digital data interface between the movable transducer probe and the computer device and, based on the read out digital control data, to control the transducers of the transducer array;
wherein the buffered streamed digital raw data is the same as the digital raw data,
wherein the computer device is configured to carry out a respective digital beamforming for the buffered measurement data sets by time-delayed addition of samples, to determine image values for a plurality of tissue locations at different tissue depths and with several tissue locations for each tissue depth, thereby to obtain a reconstructed image of the tissue sector, to generate, based on the reconstructed images, an image stream of consecutive reconstructed images or of images calculated therefrom with a predetermined image refresh rate, and to supply it to a display which reproduces the image stream,
wherein the computer device is configured to determine digital control data based on which the operation of the transducers of the transducer array for transmitting ultrasonic signals and for receiving ultrasonic echoes is determined for the consecutive measurement time intervals, and
further wherein the movable transducer probe is configured to read the digital control data via the digital data interface or an additional digital data interface between the movable transducer probe and the computer device and, based on these read-out control data, to control the transducers of the transducer array.