Patent ID: 7578791

Claim:
An ultrasonic diagnostic imaging system which acquires images of differently oriented image planes of a patient in rapid succession comprising: a probe including a two dimensional array transducer; a beamformer, coupled to the array transducer, for scanning beams over a variety of different directions and inclinations with respect to the array transducer; a beamformer controller programmable to scan beams over differently oriented image planes in a sequence of image planes until acquisition of the image planes has been completed; an image processor coupled to the beamformer; a display coupled to the image processor; a plane orientation control, coupled to the beamformer controller, for adjustment of the orientations of a plurality of image planes relative to selected anatomy; a storage device responsive to the plane orientation control and operative to store parameters of different image plane orientations selected by operation of the plane orientation control; and an acquisition control, coupled to the beamformer and responsive to the stored parameters, for initiation in a diagnostic exam of the acquisition of a sequence of image planes in the selected succession of different orientations with respect to the selected anatomy.