Patent ID: 9642596
Date: 2017-05-09
CPC Classifications: A61B,G01S

Claim:
1. An ultrasound imaging apparatus, comprising: a transmitter which delivers a transmission signal to electroacoustic conversion elements in a transmit aperture having a predetermined area in multiple electroacoustic conversion elements arranged in a predetermined ultrasound transmit-receive surface and drives the electroacoustic conversion elements, and transmits an ultrasound beam to a predetermined position in an imaging target; a receiver which instructs the multiple electroacoustic conversion elements in a predetermined receive aperture to receive an echo of the ultrasound beam from the imaging target, to obtain a reception signal; a signal processor which subjects the reception signal to a computing process and generates an image; and a controller comprising a computer readable medium with a program disposed thereon, the program configured to instruct the transmitter to perform a first transmission to transmit a first ultrasound beam to a position in the imaging target and then instructs the receiver to perform a first reception to receive an echo of the first ultrasound beam, which thereafter instructs the transmitter to perform a second transmission to transmit a second ultrasound beam to a same position as the position being transmitted the first ultrasound beam and then instructs the receiver to perform a second reception to receive an echo of the second ultrasound beam, thereafter instructs the signal processor to perform computation on reception signals being obtained in the first reception and the second reception, thereby extracts a nonlinear component included in the reception signals, wherein,