Patent ID: 8211019

Claim:
A clinical apparatus comprising: an ultrasound transducer having at least one oscillator; a transmitter circuit which supplies drive signals to the at least one oscillator of the ultrasound transducer; a receiver circuit which receives echo signals outputted from the at least one oscillator of the ultrasound transducer and which performs phase matching processing on the echo signals; and a data processor is configured to yield superimposed echo signals by superimposing plural beams generated in different directions, said plural beams being generated by performing at least one of (i) a mechanical scan, (ii) transmission and reception of steered beams in the different directions, and (iii) aperture synthesis in the different directions with respect to the received echo signals; wherein said data processor superimposes at least three beams of different directions at least two different times to obtain at least three pairs of three-dimensional complex signals with single-octant spectra or superimposes at least two beams of different directions at least two different times to obtain at least two pairs of two-dimensional complex signals with single-quadrant spectra, and derives simultaneous equations with respect to one of three-dimensional displacement vector components, two-dimensional displacement vector components, a one-dimensional displacement component, three-dimensional velocity vector components, two-dimensional velocity vector components, and a one-dimensional velocity component.