Patent ID: 7806823

Claim:
An ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus comprising: a transceiver unit configured to generate a plurality of ultrasonic beams with respect to a bone in a subject and obtains an echo signal for each of the ultrasonic beams; a tracking unit configured to identify, for each of the ultrasonic beams, a surface point corresponding to a bone surface based on the echo signal corresponding to the ultrasonic beam, and tracks the surface point of the ultrasonic beam; a shape generator unit configured to generate shape data of the bone surface based on the plurality of surface points corresponding to the plurality of ultrasonic beams; and a characteristic evaluation unit for evaluating a mechanical characteristic of the bone based on a change in a shape of the bone obtained from the shape data when an external action is applied to the bone, wherein the tracking unit is further configured to track the surface points from a state in which the external action is not applied to a state in which the external action is applied, the shape generator unit is further configured to generate, as the shape data, an interpolation line based on the plurality of surface points in the state in which the external action is not applied and an interpolation line based on the plurality of surface points in the state in which the external action is applied, and the characteristic evaluation unit is further configured to overlap two interpolation lines, one interpolation line corresponding to the state in which the external action is not applied and the other interpolation line corresponding to the state in which the external action is applied by matching both ends of one of the interpolation lines and both ends of the other interpolation line to correct a displacement between the two interpolation lines due to a movement of the bone, and evaluate the mechanical characteristic of the bone based on the two corrected interpolation lines.