Patent ID: 8369960

Claim:
A method for controlling the wireless transfer of acoustic signals between ultrasound-enabled medical devices, the method comprising: providing a source device equipped with a plurality of acoustic transducer elements configured to transmit and receive an acoustic signal; providing a target device equipped with at least one acoustic transducer element configured to receive acoustic signals transmitted from the source device and transmit acoustic signals to the source device; entering the target device into a transmission mode of operation and transmitting one or more acoustic signals from the target device; entering the source device into a reception mode of operation and receiving the one or more acoustic signals from the target device on the transducer elements of the source device; iteratively comparing the acoustic signals received by the source device transducer elements against a reference signal, performing a cross-correlation of the acoustic signals received by the source device transducer elements from the target device, and computing a phase-delay parameter for each transducer element; and dynamically adjusting one or more transmission parameters of the source device to increase the signal coherence at the target device over time, the transmission parameters including at least one temporally-dependent or event-dependent adjustment, wherein adjusting the one or more transmission parameters of the source device includes computing, based on one or more of the computed phase-delay parameters, at least one compensation factor for adjusting at least one characteristic of an acoustic signal transmitted from one or more of the transducer elements of the source device.