Patent ID: 7510529

Claim:
An ultrasound reconstruction unit having a receive aperture, comprising: a transducer array comprising one or more transducer elements, the one or more transducer elements configured to receive ultrasound signals from a medium of interest and convert the received ultrasound signals into echo signals; a multiplexer configured to selectively couple the one or more transducer elements in the transducer array and pass selected echo signals; and a receive aperture control engine configured to: adaptively determine a set of reconstruction signals based on at least a series of selected echo signals; compare the size of the receive aperture with a predetermined number of reconstruction channels at each imaging point, wherein the size of the receive aperture is expressed as a number or active transducer elements; and pass the selected echo signals from selected receive channels of the one or more transducer elements to a reconstruction processor if the size of the receive aperture is not greater than the number of reconstruction channels.