Abstract: There is disclosed a method for fabricating a liquid jet recording head having heat acting portions, communicating to orifices for liquid discharge, for applying heat energy to a liquid to form a bubble therein, electricity-heat converters for generating said heat energy, pairs of electrodes, and an upper protective layer, characterized in that the wet etching rate of electrode layer is higher on the upper portion in a direction of film thickness than on the lower portion.

Abstract: A data interpolation processing apparatus used in an ultrasonic diagnostic system and having an interpolation arithmetic unit for obtaining indication data related to a point of interest using a total of eight sampling data. The eight sampling data are located on a total of four scanning lines which include two scanning lines placed on each of opposite sides of the point of interest in the scanning direction, and which include two sampling data on each of the four scanning lines, wherein each of the two sampling data are placed on the opposite sides of a line extending in the scanning direction and passing through the point of interest.

Abstract: An ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus including ultrasonic transducers. The ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus performs calculations for respective ultrasonic transducers to determine at which focal position a signal having just been received by the transducers is reflected in accordance with a lapse of time from a time when ultrasonic waves are transmitted. A delay time of respective received signals obtained from the transducers are determined in accordance with the results of the calculations. According to the present invention, control data which determines the delay time is stored in a first stored apparatus, compensation data which compensates the control data is stored in a second storage apparatus. The control data and compensation data read out respectively from these first and second storage apparatuses are added to one another, and the delay time for transmission and reception is determined according to the sum of the control data and compensation data.

Abstract: An ultrasonic wave beam former including: a ultrasonic wave probe (1) equipped with a plurality of transducers (2) for converting a ultrasonic wave signal to an electric signal for effecting a dynamic focus by multiplying each channel signal as an output signal from each of the transducers (2) by a reference wave signal having the phase which is dynamically adjusted for each channel, and adding together each after-multiplication signal after the multiplication through a delay line (3), characterized in that at least two kinds of reference signals having mutually different frequencies are provided for each of the channels and at least two multipliers (10) are also provided;each of the reference signals is constituted so as to receive an ultrasonic wave signal from a direction differenct from others and have a phase angle (.theta.

Abstract: An ultrasonic imaging apparatus for obtaining a two-dimensional distribution of a predetermined characteristic parameter of a medium of the ultrasound at various points in a plane. The apparatus contains a unit for designating a region of interest in said plane, and a unit for obtaining and indicating statistical information on a dispersing characteristic of said predetermined characteristic parameter of the medium at the various points in the region of interest of said plane. In addition, the apparatus contains a unit for obtaining and indicating a recent history of the dispersing characteristics during the operation of obtaining the two-dimensional distributions which are most recently carried out. Further, the apparatus contains a unit for obtaining and indicating the plane for which the minimum standard deviation is obtained, and a unit for indicating the two-dimensional distribution for the plane.

Abstract: An ultrasonic color Doppler diagnostic apparatus for displaying at least two successive frames of original images of the two-dimensional images obtained for each ultrasonic interframe time, to find and display a natural interpolated image. The apparatus includes a shape parameter calculating unit which calculates the shape parameters characterizing the shape of a blood flow region on the original images and, a shape parameter interpolating unit which calculates the shape parameters interpolated at a designated timing designated in the interframe time from the shape parameters, the interframe time. In addition and the designated timing, an image converting unit is provided which converts the image of at least one frame of the original image in the plurality of original images in accordance with the shape parameters at a designated timing found by the shape parameter interpolating means to obtain the interpolated image.

Abstract: A liquid jet recording head having a support member, an electrothermal converting body on the support member, the converting body including a heat generating resistor layer and electrodes electrically connected to the layer, and an upper protective layer over the converting body containing a ion exchanger. The ion exchanger functions to trap mobile ions permeating from the liquid flowing through the recording head thereby preventing corrosion.

Abstract: An amplitude variable pulse generator is provided with two voltage supply sources. The first voltage source supplies a variable voltage which determines the amplitude of the output pulse. The second voltage source is a fixed or constant voltage source which provides a voltage lower in value than the first voltage. The second voltage source quickly pulls up a voltage between a drain and a source of a switching MOSFET, which generates the output pulse, by providing a charging voltage for an output capacitance of the MOSFET. By doing so, the output capacitance of the MOSFET is quickly reduced, and the trailing edge of the output pulse is not rounded even when the variable voltage is low. As a result, the waveform of the output pulse is not rounded for a very small amplitude pulse. Resolution of a supersonic wave device especially a supersonic diagnostic device is thereby improved.

Abstract: A method and system for making visible a flow of blood in a living body. The method comprises the steps of obtaining blood flow vector distribution maps by a recpetion of waves reflected from a living body to which ultrasonic pulses are radiated, and by a Doppler analysis of the reflected waves, arranging dummy blood corpuscle in domains in which the blood flow vector distribution maps are expressed, calculating flow velocity vector of the dummy blood corpuscle for each dummy blood corpuscle from the blood flow vector distribution maps, forming a plurality of images in which the dummy blood corpuscles are sequentially moved in response to the flow velocity vectors, and sequentially displaying the plurality of the images on a display. Also, the density of the arrangement of the dummy blood corpuscles, for example, corresponds to the blood pressure.

Abstract: Ultrasound diagnostic equipment comprises a tissue power unit for calculating tissue scattering power of tissues of an object of measurement in an organ, a blood power unit for calculating scattering power of blood in the organ and estimating blood scattering power at a portion of the tissues of the object of measurement by using the calculated scattering power of the blood, an integrated backscatter unit for normalizing the tissue scattering power by using the estimated blood scattering power and calculating an integrated backscatter by the normalized tissue scattering power, and a display unit for displaying the integrated backscatter. Therefore, the integrated backscatter of the tissues can be quantitatively estimated without being influenced by attenuation. Furthermore, this estimated quantitative integrated backscatter of the tissues is displayed on the display unit accompanied with a B-mode image, an electrocardiogram, and the like, so that diagnostic accuracy can be increased.

Abstract: A frequency of a signal, particularly a frequency, partly varied as time passes, of a signal is counted in real time by producing a delay signal by delaying the signal as much as a predetermined time, detecting delayed zero-cross pulses from the delayed signal, detecting zero-cross pulses from the non-delayed signal, counting a first number of the delayed zero-cross pulses after the predetermined time is over, counting a second number of the zero-cross pulses during and after the predetermined time, producing a number difference between the first number and the second number by subtracting the first number from the second number and halving the number difference. The predetermined time is designated longer than a half period of the signal frequency to be counted. When the predetermined time is set long, the average frequency of the signal is counted, and when that is set short comparing with the partly varied interval of the signal frequency, the partly varied frequency of the signal is counted in real time.

Abstract: An ultrasonic analyzer used in an ultrasonic diagnosis instrument for minimizing the effects of noise in echo signals.

Abstract: The present invention relates to a signal processing apparatus for quantitatively measuring ultrasonic characteristics of a medium, such as a human body and realizes the high speed quantitative measurement by processing all signals in the time domain. In the processing for eliminating an error, produced by a degree of convergence of the ultrasonic beam, a correcting function that is a function of the depth and frequency is employed. The correcting function is measured in a no-attenuation medium and converted into a form suited to the time domain processing. The function is stored and such frequency characteristics of the function are sequentially read during an actual medium measurement to control the characteristic of a variable characteristic filter to correct the received signal.

Abstract: An apparatus for measuring acoustic characteristic values of a medium by sending ultrasound pulses into the medium and analyzing the reflected waves from the medium. Medium characteristic values are extracted from the reflected waves, and spectrum scalloping is eliminated. The present invention executes the nonlinear filtering process, for example, the median filtering process to the spectrums, applies a model spectrum to the filtered result and thereby facilitates measurement of supressing fluctuation even when a small number of space average samples one used, by obtaining .beta. from such model spectrum.

Abstract: A diagnosis apparatus for discriminating a property of the tissue to be observed from the reflected ultrasonic wave uses the nature of the fine structure of the tissue, and more practically uses the interval of small reflecting bodies dispersely distributed in the tissue as the parameters. The intervals flucatuate. Therefore, an average value and/or a degree of fluctuation is calculated and is displayed. For obtaining the average interval, a method of using the cepstrum of the received signal or a method of using the self-correlation of the received signal can be used.

Abstract: The present invention relates to an apparatus which determines the distribution of the attenuation slope coefficient on a real-time basis using the center frequency shift. In one embodiment, the phase difference between a received signal and a reference signal is determined using EXCLUSIVE OR gates or an inverse trigonometric relation stored in a ROM. The phase difference is input to a differentiator which outputs the center frequency shift of the received signal on a real-time basis. The center frequency shift is input to another differentiator which outputs the attenuation slope coefficient. In other embodiments, the received signal is distributed into received signal bands, having different center frequencies, and signal characteristics of the received signal bands are averaged to remove virtually all effects of spectrum scalloping in the time domain. Thus, the attenuation slope coefficient is obtained without the effects of spectrum scalloping using simple hardware and without Fourier transformation.

Abstract: This invention relates to a system for measuring the non-linear parameter B/A of an ultrasonic medium such as a living tissue, namely the value which indicates a rate of change of the sound velocity with change of pressure, utilizing reflected ultrasonic waves. In this invention, a measuring burst pulse, having a comparatively high frequency, and a pumping pulse, having a comparatively low frequency and a high sound pressure, for giving a change of pressure are transmitted in the same direction while they are superposed, the phase of the reflected waves from each region of the ultrasonic medium is detected as a function of time, and it is then differentiated. Thereby, the distribution of B/A along the transmitting direction of said pulses can be obtained.

Abstract: The present invention relates to an apparatus which determines the distribution of the attenuation slope coefficient on a real time basis using the center frequency shift. The phase difference between a received signal and a reference signal is determined using EXCLUSIVE OR gates or an inverse trigonometric relation stored in a ROM. The phase difference is input to a differentiator which outputs the center frequency shift of the received signal on a real time basis. The center frequency shift is input to another differentiator which outputs the attenuation slope coefficient. Thus, the attenuation slope coefficient is determined using simple hardware and without calculating the power spectrum and the first moment.

Abstract: A measurement method and system for measuring characteristics of attenuation of domains in an object comprises transmitting ultrasonic waves into the object and receiving ultrasonic waves reflected from the object. The measured characteristics of attenuation of reflected waves is determined using signal intensities. A plurality of ultrasonic waves having different frequencies are transmitted either simultaneously or alternately to an object, and the reflected waves are received from the object. The signal intensities corresponding to the transmission frequencies among the reflected waves are stored and the signal intensity ratio is calculated. The signal intensity ratio indicates the attenuation characteristic. The attenuation coefficient can also be obtained using a time interval from the transmission time to the time of the reflected wave is received. The attenuation slope can be obtained from this attenuation coefficient and the frequency difference between transmitted ultrasonic waves.

Abstract: An ultrasonic imaging apparatus comprises transducers for transmitting ultrasonic waves and receiving acoustic. The apparatus also transmits ultrasonic waves of different frequencies simultaneously from a plurality of transducers.The frequency characteristics of the transducers are determined in a manner so as to produce the function of frequency filters. An electric filter is additionally provided for compensation. Thus, crosstalk is eliminated even when the frequency difference between the transmitting ultrasonic waves is kept small.