Ultrasonic signal processor for a hand held ultrasonic diagnostic instrument

Abstract

A hand held ultrasonic instrument is provided in a portable unit which performs both B mode and Doppler imaging. The instrument includes a transducer array mounted in a hand-held enclosure, with an integrated circuit transceiver connected to the elements of the array for the reception of echo signals. A digital signal processing circuit performs both B mode and Doppler signal processing such as filtering, detection and Doppler estimation, as well as advanced functions such as assembly of multiple zone focused scanlines, synthetic aperture formation, depth dependent filtering, speckle reduction, flash suppression, and frame averaging.

What is claimed is:  
     
         1 . In a handheld ultrasound device, a digital signal processor comprising: 
 a digital B mode filter for filtering B mode signals;    a digital Doppler filter for filtering Doppler signals;    a B mode signal detection and mapping circuit; and    a Doppler signal estimator circuit.