Patent ID: 7883466

Claim:
An ultrasonic probe apparatus comprising: a capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer (c-MUT) for transmitting and receiving ultrasound waves, the c-MUT comprising a plurality of transducer elements arranged in an array structure; a transmission control portion comprising: a transmission transducer elements selecting section adapted to select transmission transducer elements for transmitting the ultrasound wave from the plurality of transducer elements, a driving section adapted to apply a drive signal to the selected transmission transducer elements, the drive signal an RF pulse signal with DC bias signal superimposed thereon, a transmission delay section adapted to perform scanning with a transmission ultrasonic beam, and a bias adjustment section adapted to adjust a voltage value of the DC bias signal; and a reception control portion comprising: a reception transducer elements selecting section adapted to select reception transducer elements for receiving ultrasound waves as a plurality of reception signals from the plurality of transducer elements, an amplification section adapted to amplify the plurality of reception signals, a frequency band pass filtering processing section having a plurality of different frequency band pass filtering characteristics including at least those for a low pass filtering and a high pass filtering, the frequency band pass filtering processing section being adapted to select any one of the frequency band pass filtering characteristics and to perform frequency band pass filtering of the plurality of reception signals based on the selected frequency band pass filtering characteristic, an analog/digital signal conversion section adapted to convert the plurality of reception signals which have passed through the frequency band pass filtering processing section to a plurality of digital signals, a beam synthesizing section adapted to synthesize the plurality of digital signals to a single signal, an image constructing section adapted to convert the single signal to an image, and an image display section for displaying the image.