Patent ID: 8337406

Claim:
An ultrasound system, comprising: a stress applying unit configured to apply stress to a target object; an ultrasound data acquisition unit configured to transmit/receive ultrasound signals to/from the target object and sequentially acquire a plurality of ultrasound data frames indicative of the target object based on the received ultrasound signals, wherein the plurality of ultrasound data frames include at least two first ultrasound data frames acquired at a first time duration in which stress is applied to the target object and at least two second ultrasound data frames acquired at a second time duration in which the stress is released from the target object; and a processing unit configured to calculate first inter-frame displacements between the at least two first ultrasound data frames and second inter-frame displacements between the at least two second ultrasound data frames to form elastic images and apply a different predetermined weight to each of the elastic images for persistence processing according to whether the calculated inter-frame displacements are the first inter-frame displacements or the second inter-frame displacements, wherein the processing unit includes: an elastic image forming section configured to sequentially form a plurality of elastic images based on the first and second inter-frame displacements; a displacement mean calculating section configured to calculate a displacement mean of each of the first and second inter-frame displacements corresponding to each of the elastic images, wherein the displacement mean calculating section is further configured to set displacement means calculated from the first inter-frame displacements and displacement means calculated from the second inter-frame displacements, and wherein the displacement means calculated from the first inter-frame displacements and the displacement means calculated from the second inter-frame displacements have different signs; and a persistence processing section configured to set first and second predetermined weights based on a sign of the displacement mean corresponding to the current elastic image, and perform the persistence processing on the elastic images by applying the first predetermined weight to the current elastic image and the second predetermined weight to a previous elastic image persistence-processed.