Patent ID: 8740799

Claim:
An ultrasound diagnostic apparatus, comprising: a probe that transmits and receives ultrasound with respect to a diagnostic region including a bubble; a transmission control unit that controls the probe to transmit ultrasound under transmission conditions which are set based on structural characteristics of a bubble; a reception processing unit that obtains a reception signal corresponding to ultrasound received by the probe; a harmonic extraction unit that processes the reception signal to extract a harmonic component contained in the reception signal; and an image forming unit that forms image data concerning the bubble based on the harmonic component, wherein the transmission control unit controls the probe to transmit the ultrasound at a transmission frequency which is set using a resonance frequency of the bubble as a reference and at a transmission sound pressure which is set using an expansion ratio of the bubble as a reference, wherein the control unit is configured to determine the transmission frequency and the sound pressure based on harmonic signals of the bubble being substantially the same as fundamental signals of the bubble while harmonic signals from the tissue being substantially lower relative to fundamental signals from the tissue.