Abstract: An ultrasonic diagnostic imaging system transmits a plurality of focused beams normal to the plane of a transducer aperture and receives multiple receive lines in response to each transmitted beam. Sub-apertures of the transducer aperture are defined by apodization and signals of the sub-apertures are aligned and combined to produce signals exhibiting the effect of transmit steering at different angles with respect to the sub-apertures. The steered signals are detected and the detected signals relating to common points in an image field are combined. The combined detected signals are used to produce an ultrasound image with reduced speckle.

Abstract: A method of creating a segmentation of a volume of interest in an object data set is described, which object data set is formatted into object data slices, in which at least two object data slices each contain a contour line defining the portion of the volume of interest present in that object data slice as a region of interest. The method comprises the steps of calculating at least one surface which cuts through each of the at least two regions of interest, defining two curves on each surface which intersect with the contour lines, arranging for those curves to define the portion of the volume of interest present in the surface, calculating on each of the remaining object data slices a contour line which includes those points on the curves which intersect with that object data slice. A computer program and work station are also described.

Abstract: It is described a method for acquiring a series of two-dimensional X-ray attenuation data of an object under examination (310) by means of an X-ray imaging apparatus (100) having a rotatable scanning unit (301). In order to increase the angular range of the scanning unit (301), when a region of interest (HOa) located not in the center of the object (310) is examined the object under examination (310) is shifted such that the region of interest is temporarily positioned outside the center of rotation. By coupling the rotational movement of the scanning unit (301) with the translative movement of the object (310) in a synchronized manner a collision between the scanning unit (301) and the object (310) can be effectively avoided. By employing an automated motorized object table (312) a precise pre-determined movement of the object (310) can be achieved during the data acquisition.