Patent ID: 8007439

Claim:
An ultrasound imaging system, comprising: a transmit transducer array for insonifying selected object and/or area of living tissue with a directional ultrasound pulse; at least one receive transducer for detecting and recording ultrasound echo returns, wherein said at least one receive transducer is relatively non-directional in a plane of scan, is angled differently from said transmit transducer array, and is separated from said transmit transducer array; a computer in electronic communication with said transmit transducer array and said at least one receive transducer, said computer having hardware and software for digitizing and storing each ultrasound echo in a line of computer memory, determining the location of said transmit transducer in relation to said at least one receive transducer, reconstructing scan lines as lines on a reconstructed image based on the determination of the location of the at least one receive transducer relative to that of the transmit transducer array and the average speed of ultrasound in the tissue object, and image processing to fill in gaps between scan lines.