New Patents 441

ture of a medium utilizing the power spectrum profile of received signal waves, which are derived from an incident beam pulse of ul- trasonic waves or other waves that are incident on the object to be measured and which travel through the object by transmission and reflec- tion. They are affected by various acoustic characteristic structures of the object, and in- formation about the structure can be attained by the procession of the signals received with a transducer. The processing is performed by taking their cepstrum, and filtering the slowly varying cepstra including that of the target Gaussian shaped pulse signal from the fast varying cepstra. The filtered cepstrum is pro- cessed further by the inverse transformations to the power spectrum derived from said filtered cepstrum. The influence of line cepstra remaining still in the lower frequency and the fre- quency dependence of the reflection indices of the structure to the derived power spectrum is eliminated by the distortion indices of said derived power spectrum. Thus the travelled power spectrum is recovered as a virtual spectrum, expected when such influences do not exist. Tissue characteristics are extracted from the recovered spectrum. The distortion indices are represented by various order moments of the derived power spectrum.

fluid container serves as an efficient ultrasound conducting medium. Support and rotation means allow scanning of the body part from a plurality of directions.

4545386

MANUALLY OPERATED ULTRASOUND APPLICATION

Walter Hetz, Peter Weber, Erlangen, Federal Republic Of Germany assigned to Siemens AG

iI An ultrasound applicator designed for scanning tissues and organs located in cavities of the human body. A transducer head operated by an examining person is provided with a connection cable adapted to be connected to an image signal processing device. The transducer head is designed for firm placement of a guiding organ, especially the finger of an examining person. Pre- ferably the top surface of the housing bears a recess forming a mold for the finger. Addi- tionally, a flexible yoke may be arranged as a support element.

4545385 4546771

ULTRASOUND EXAMINATION DEVICE FOR SCANNING BODY

PARTS

Joerg Pirschel, Tuebingen, Federal Republic Of Germany assigned to Siemens Aktiengesel- lschaft

Medical apparatus for ultrasonic examination of body parts which includes a fluid container and an ultrasound scanning system which is removably coupled to the fluid container. The

ACOUSTIC MICROSCOPE

Reginald Eggleton, Francis J Fry assigned to In- dianapolis Center for Advanced Research Inc (ICFAR)

The present invention relates to an ultrasound visualization system which has a capability of microscopic examination of tissue within the body without the need for removal of the tissue. A transducer, capable of producing and