Phase aberration correction in phased-array imaging systems
September 26, 2014. Estimated Expiration Date is calculated based on simple USPTO term provisions. It does not account for terminal disclaimers, term adjustments, failure to pay maintenance fees, or other factors which might affect the term of a patent.Patent ReferencesAdaptive coherent energy beam formation using phase conjugation Aberration correction using beam data from a phased array ultrasonic scanner Ultrasonic imaging apparatus Method of estimating near field aberrating delays Ultrasonic phased array imaging system with high speed adaptive processing using selected elements Beamforming time delay correction for a multi-element array ultrasonic scanner using beamsum-channel correlation Patent #: 5388461 InventorApplicationNo. 312363 filed on 09/26/1994US Classes:73/597, Velocity or propagation time measurement73/602, With signal analyzing or mathematical processing73/626, Switched600/443, Anatomic image produced by reflective scanning600/447Electronic array scanningExaminersPrimary: Williams, HezronAssistant: Finley, Rose M. Attorney, Agent or FirmInternational ClassesG01N 029/06G01N 029/10 G01N 029/24 AbstractAn ultrasonic imaging system for performing a scan in which beamforming time delay errors due to nonuniformity in ultrasound propagation speed within the transmission medium are corrected. The system employs a multiple-channel transmitter and receiver. The method estimates and corrects phase aberrations in phased array imaging systems, taking into account additional information associated with array elements which are not necessarily adjacent to each other. The method uses Kalman filtering to obtain an estimate of the phase differences associated with complex samples of pairs of adjacent receive channels. The method incorporates a scheme to detect and correct for the 2π phase slips that may occur in the data. Because the method provides information on measurement variances, better estimates are obtained by weighting the measurements according to their variances.Other References
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