Patent ID: 8444563

Claim:
An ultrasound diagnosis apparatus for generation of image data, the ultrasound diagnosis apparatus comprising: a transmission/reception control unit configured to set a plurality of ultrasound transmission/reception directions to an object; an ultrasound probe having a plurality of transducers; a transmission/reception unit configured to produce drive signals having a polarity phase difference between first and second drive signals for transmission of out-of-phase ultrasound transmissions centered only around a single ultrasound fundamental frequency f 0 into the object and configured to receive reception signals from the object at the ultrasound transmission/reception directions; a harmonic wave component extracting unit configured to extract harmonic wave components in the reception signals by performing summation of a plurality of the reception signals sequentially received through the transmission/reception unit; a reception signals processing unit configured to generate first ultrasound data by performing a logarithmic conversion of a fundamental wave component included in the reception signals, and to generate second ultrasound data by normalizing the harmonic wave components by an amplitude of the fundamental wave component and thereafter performing a logarithmic conversion of the harmonic wave components in the reception signals; a subtraction unit configured to perform a subtraction between the first ultrasound data and the second ultrasound data; and an image data generating unit configured to generate said image data based on the subtracted ultrasound data acquired along each of the transmission/reception directions.