Patent ID: 8057393

Claim:
A method for transmission of a wide beam in an ultrasonic diagnostic system, comprising steps of: dividing a transmit aperture of an ultrasonic probe into N sub-apertures; laterally dividing a focus of a desired transmit acoustic field into N sub-focuses, wherein the N sub-apertures correspond to the N sub-focuses respectively, each sub-aperture has M array elements, and N and M are integers larger than 2; and exciting the N sub-apertures by a pulse generator, so as to obtain a laterally stretched transmit acoustic field, wherein the transmit acoustic fields of the N sub-apertures focus on the corresponding N sub-focuses respectively, such that each element of a sub-aperture converges at a common focal point for that particular sub-aperture, and the transmit acoustic fields of the N sub-apertures are accumulated to form the laterally stretched transmit acoustic field of a wide transmit beam covering acoustic fields of a range of all receive lines obtained by parallel beam synthesis.