Patent ID: 7540842

Claim:
A method for transmitting ultrasonic beams into a region in a medical diagnostic imaging system, said method comprising: (a) transmitting a plurality of spatially distinct ultrasonic transmit beams corresponding to a frame into a region; (b) during (a), cycling a selected transmit parameter T through a sequence T 1 . . . T n ; T 1 . . . T n ; T 1 . . . T n across at least a portion of the frame, where T 1 , T n designate alternative values of the transmit parameter T, and where n≧2; (c) receiving a plurality of ultrasonic receive beams from the region and corresponding to the frame, each receive beam associated with a respective one of the transmit beams; and (d) combining at least two of the receive beams of the frame and associated with spatially distinct ones of the transmit beams; wherein (b) comprises alternating by one of a: line-by-line and group-of-lines by group-of-lines basis.