Patent ID: 7513873

Claim:
A method for receive beamforming in a CW Doppler ultrasound imaging system, comprising the steps of: generating a plurality of RF ultrasound signals from a respective plurality of N transducer elements incorporated in an array; receiving the plurality of RF ultrasound signals from the respective plurality of N transducer elements, said RF signals are characterized by a frequency, f RF ; translating the frequency of said RF signals to an intermediate frequency, f IF , to produce a respective plurality of IF signals, said intermediate frequency is above the flicker noise corner frequency; aligning the plurality of IF signals by a predetermined phasing; summing said plurality of IF signals to produce a beamformed IF output; and downconverting the beamformed IF output to a complex Doppler signal, wherein each of the above steps is performed by said CW Doppler ultrasound imaging system.