Phase aberration corrections utilizing color flow processors

Claim 1

An ultrasound imaging apparatus for transmitting ultrasound signals to a subject to be diagnosed and for constructing an image from received ultrasound echo signals, the apparatus providing phase aberration correction of wave distortions in the subject, the ultrasound imaging apparatus comprising: a transducer array comprised of transducer elements for converting electrical driving signals supplied thereto into the ultrasound signals and for converting the received ultrasound echo signals into electrical echo signals; means for generating and supplying the electrical driving signals to the transducer elements; means for forming pairs of beamformer channels from the electrical echo signals received from transducer elements for a region of interest, each pair comprised of a reference beamformer channel formed from electrical echo signals produced by a group of reference transducer elements and a correction beamformer channel formed from electrical echo signals produced by a group of correction transducer elements; means for applying the pairs of beamformer channels in parallel to color flow processors having auto-correlation apparatus to produce a cross-correlation of the pairs; and means, in response to the output from the color flow processor auto-correlation apparatus, for determining phase-corrected time delay values and for applying the phase-corrected time delay values as input to the means for forming pairs of beamformer channels.