Patent ID: RE40456

Claim:
An acoustic imaging apparatus, comprising: control logic; a plurality of transducer elements arranged in an array, each coupled to said control logic and capable of transmitting an acoustic signal representative of an electrical transmit control signal propagated from said control logic and generating an electrical receive signal representative of an incident acoustic signal; means within said control logic for generating an electrical transmit control signal for each transducer element such that the electrical transmit control signal for each transducer element contains a coded signal; means within said control logic for generating an electrical receive control signal for each transducer element such that the electrical receive control signal for each transducer element contains a frequency and phase shift than when combined with the transducer element's electrical receive signal modifies the frequency and phase of that electrical receive signal in such a manner as to permit the coherent combination of the modified electrical receive signals from all of said plurality of transducer elements; means for combining the electrical receive control signal of each transducer element with an electrical receive signal generated by that transducer; means coupled to each of said transducer elements for combining the modified electrical receive signals from said transducer elements so as to form a coherently combined array output signal; means coupled to said transducer output combining means for decoding a combined reflected coded signal in the coherently combined array output signal to produce a decoding means output signal; and means coupled to said decoding means for generating image data from said decoding means output signal.