Patent ID: 8824743

Claim:
A method of processing ultrasound acoustic data of media insonified by an ultrasound transducer, the method comprising: determining a level of relative motion between the insonified media and the ultrasound transducer at spatial points in the media; acquiring the acoustic data of the insonified media from the ultrasound transducer and storing the acquired data in memory, the acquiring the acoustic data including: generating an acoustic signal; receiving at least one echo of the acoustic signal at a plurality of receiving elements on the ultrasound transducer and obtaining an echo signal therefrom; and storing each echo signal from each of the plurality of receiving elements to form the stored acquired data; determining, from the level of relative motion between the insonified media and the ultrasound transducer at each of the spatial points, an amount of the stored acquired data to use in generating an image point of the insonified media for each corresponding spatial point in which the amount of the stored acquired data used in generating each individual image point is dependent on the determined level of relative motion for the corresponding spatial point; and processing the determined amount of the stored acquired data to generate each of the image points of the insonified media for display, the processing the determined amount of the stored acquired data includes: mapping a given pixel into a region of the stored echo signals in the memory, which comprises determining sample points in the stored acquired data that correspond to a spatial location of the given pixel relative to a respective transducer element; determining from the level of relative motion between the insonified media and the ultrasound transducer at the pixel's spatial location the amount of the stored acquisition data to use in generating the image of the insonified media at the pixel location; and organizing the determined sample points of the stored acquired data into an array for the given pixel; processing the array to generate a response for the given pixel; and using the response to obtain acoustic information for the given pixel.