Patent ID: 6641535
Filing Date: 2003-11-04
Classification: G01N

Abstract:
An ultrasonic probe for manual inspection of a body, comprising:a housing that accommodates an ultrasonic crystal and has a contact surface for contact with a surface of the body to be inspected; at least one digital camera that is attached to the housing and which is oriented towards the surface of the body and periodically delivers an electronic image of portions of the surface of the body; a circuit for image processing that has an image memory for at least one electronic image acquired by the digital camera, and which has a comparator which compares two electronic images, acquired at different times by the digital camera, of overlapping portions of the surface of the body to be inspected and which determines from differences of these two electronic images a displacement of the housing relative to the surface, which is then output; and a motion memory that stores the displacement of the housing starting from a location at the beginning of the measurement and contains the actual position of the housing with respect to said location.