Patent ID: 11911218
Assignee: KONINKLIJKE PHILIPS N.V.
Field: Medical technology (Instruments)
Classification: CPC A  G | IPC A  G

Claim 0:
1. An ultrasonic diagnostic imaging system for display of 2D or 3D images comprising:
an ultrasound probe having a two dimensional array transducer adapted to scan a target region with lxN patches of elements of the array, wherein N extends in a dimension of the array transducer, wherein the N dimension of the patches extends in one of an elevation or azimuth dimension, and wherein each 1×N patch is divided into subpatches comprising a plurality of elements less than the full N elements;
a microbeamformer located in the ultrasound probe and coupled to elements of the array which applies delays to a plurality of subpatch signals received from each subpatch to focus the subpatch signals in the one of the dimensions;
a system beamformer coupled to the ultrasound probe to receive the focused patch subpatch signals and apply delays to the subpatch signals to steer and/or focus the signals in the other of the elevation or azimuth dimensions;
a beamformer controller, coupled to the microbeamformer and the system beamformer, and responsive to a user control to control the scanning of a target region;
an image processor responsive to the signals steered and/or focused by the system beamformer to produce image data; and
a display, coupled to the image processor, to display a 2D or 3D image of the target region.