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英文誌(2004-)

Journal of Medical Ultrasonics

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cover

1991 - Vol.18

Vol.18 No.01

Original Article(原著)

(0001 - 0011)

コンパクトな空間的コンパウンドシステムによるスペックルの低減

Speckle Reduction by Compact Spatial Compounding System

大矢 晃久1, 油田 信一2, 島崎 通3, 中島 真人1

Akihisa OHYA1, Shin'ichi YUTA2, Tohru SHIMAZAKI3, Masato NAKAJIMA1

1慶応義塾大学理工学部電気工学科, 2筑波大学電子情報工学系, 3横河メディカルシステム(株)

1Department of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Science and Technology, Keio University, 2Institute of Information Science and Electronics, University of Tsukuba, 3Yokogawa Medical Systems, Ltd.

キーワード : Speckle reduction, Spatial compounding, Sector scan

The ultrasonic B-mode image is degraded by a random granular pattern called “speckle”. This speckle arises as a result of random interference of the ultrasonic waves being reflected or scattered from each point of the tissue and does not coincide with the microstructure of the tissue itself. It is known that the speckle is well reduced by means of the spatial compounding process. But in fact, the practical system for this process has conventionally been large-scale.
On the contrary, we have devised a compact spatial compounding system using plural sector scan-type transducers. In this paper, we investigate the scheme of the system, the effectiveness of speckle reduction, and the resolution of the system by 2-D computer simulations. The results of experiments using an agar phantom including powdered graphite are also shown.
We conclude that the speckle is sufficiently reduced without degradation of the resolution when using three sector scan-type transducers whose mutual intervals are more than 10 millimeters each. By using the sector scan-type transducers in this system, the size of the probe can be made equal to the electric linear scan probe, which is the most widely used type. Consequently, we believe that this system is particularly effective in making diagnoses in the abdominal region, the mammary gland and the thyroid gland.