Patent ID: 9649094
Date: 2017-05-16
CPC Classifications: A61B,G01S

Claim:
1. A method, comprising: generating an acoustic pulse with an ultrasound transducer and transmitting the acoustic pulse from the ultrasound transducer into an adjacent physical medium; receiving at each of a plurality of receiving elements of the ultrasound transducer at least one echo of the acoustic pulse from the adjacent physical medium in response to the transmitting the acoustic pulse into the adjacent physical medium; obtaining, by one or more processing units communicatively coupled to the ultrasound transducer and from each of the plurality of receiving elements, an echo signal based at least in part on the received at least one echo; generating, by the one or more processing units, a separate respective data set array comprised of the obtained echo signals from each of the plurality of receiving elements of the ultrasound transducer, wherein each respective data set array is organized into a number of columns corresponding to the plurality of receiving elements, and wherein each column of each respective data set array consists of obtained echo signals from a corresponding one of the plurality of receiving elements; mapping, by the one or more processing units, a first pixel or voxel from a set of pixels or voxels of a display device into a region of a respective data set array; organizing, by the one or more processing units, the mapped region of the respective data set array into a matrix for the first pixel or voxel; processing, by the one or more processing units, the matrix with a matrix operation to generate a signal response for the first pixel or voxel; obtaining, by the one or more processing units, acoustic information for the first pixel or voxel based on the signal response; and repeating all of the preceding steps for each remaining pixel or voxel from the set of pixels or voxels of the display device and providing, by the one or more processing units communicatively coupled to the display device, a two-dimensional or three-dimensional image, respectively, based on the acoustic information for the set of pixels or voxels, to be displayed on the display device.