Patent Document ID: 8162833
Application ID: 12890374
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. A system for breast ultrasound examination, comprising: a scanning apparatus comprising an ultrasound transducer and configured to selectively compress a breast of a supine patient in a chestward direction and to ultrasonically scan the chestwardly compressed breast of the supine patient to acquire image data representative of a three-dimensional data volume of sonographic property values related to respective positions in the chestwardly compressed breast, at least some of said positions being at fine spacings of less than 2 mm; a processor configured to process the image data representative of the three-dimensional data volume by combining said sonographic property values of said three-dimensional data volume through computer processing to generate therefrom two-dimensional thick-slice images representative of thick slices of the chestwardly compressed breast, wherein said fine spacings relative to a thickness of said thick slices such that one of said thick slices encompasses plural ones of said positions in its thickness direction; and a computerized display that displays said two-dimensional thick-slice images; wherein each of said two-dimensional thick-slice images represents said sonographic property of the chestwardly compressed breast within a slab subvolume thereof between about 2 mm 20 mm thick.