Patent ID: 7868824

Claim:
A beamforming apparatus comprising: a transmitting unit for generating transmission signals, adding respective delays to the transmission signals for transmission beamforming, and supplying the transmission signals to a transducer array including plural elements; a first apodization unit for adjusting at least one of amplitudes and waveforms of the transmission signals; a receiving unit for receiving reception signals from said transducer array, amplifying and filtering the reception signals, and adding respective delays to the reception signals; a second apodization unit for adjusting at least one of amplitudes and waveforms of the reception signals; an addition unit for adding the reception signals to one another for reception beamforming; and a calculation unit for calculating a point spread function representing spread of a beam at a selected point so as to obtain at least one of array parameters and beamforming parameters to be used in at least one of said transducer array, said transmitting unit, said receiving unit, said first and second apodization units, and said addition unit by minimizing a squared error between the calculated point spread function and a predetermined point spread function by using at least one of (i) an optimization method selected from a combination of a linear method and a regularization method and a combination of a nonlinear method and a regularization method, (ii) a linear programming method, and (iii) a dynamic programming method.