Patent ID: 7479110

Claim:
An ultrasonic diagnostic equipment comprising; a probe having a plurality of arrayed ultrasonic transducer elements, a plurality of transmission drive circuits for driving the ultrasonic transducer elements, a plurality of high voltage switches for connecting the ultrasonic transducer elements to the transmission drive circuits, a plurality of limiters for clipping transmission pulses having a given voltage or more, which are generated at the transmission drive circuits, a cross point switch having input terminals whose number is larger than the number of the transmission drive circuits for sorting and adding input signals, said cross point switch having output terminals whose number is one half of the number of said input terminals for outputting signals produced by said adding of said input signals, low voltage switches for selectively supplying output signals of the limiters to the input terminals of the cross point switch as said input signals, terminals of pairs of said low voltage switches being connected to each other in such a manner that the number of said input signals to said cross point switch becomes one half of the number of the low voltage switches, A/D converters for converting output signals of the cross point switch to digital signals, a beam forming device for delay-adding the output signals of the A/D converters, and a controller for controlling said high voltage switches and said low voltage switches in such a manner that a maximum number of said ultrasonic transducer elements which can be connected to said cross point switch is greater than a maximum number of said ultrasonic transducer elements which can be connected to said transmission drive circuits when performing one transmission and a corresponding reception.