ATL Ultrasound Awarded Patent For Tissue Harmonic Imaging

ATL Ultrasound, a Philips Medical Systems company, is receiving U.S. Patent No. 5,879,303 for Tissue Harmonic Imaging technology. Pioneered by ATL, Tissue Harmonic Imaging is a major advance that reduces unwanted artifacts in ultrasound imaging caused by the interaction of low-frequency soundwaves with certain tissue types and enables physicians to make more definitive diagnoses than possible before.

Harmonic echoes are nonlinear, high-frequency signals created when tissue interacts with ultrasound energy. Previously, it was widely assumed that these higher frequencies were too small to be measured in the body. ATL engineers were the first to demonstrate the ability to detect this minute nonlinear energy. Furthermore, leveraging proprietary real-time parallel processing of acoustic information from multiple frequency bands, ATL's HDI 3000 and 5000 systems remove specular artifacts that would otherwise obscure the sensitive harmonic echoes.

Clinical studies have shown that the ability to capture and display harmonic information is particularly useful in cardiology, where up to 40% of patients are difficult to image with ultrasound due to physical characteristics or health conditions such as obesity, pulmonary disease or prior chest surgery.

ATL's Tissue Harmonic Imaging technology is based on the company's five years of pioneering collaborative research in harmonic imaging with ultrasound contrast agents. In 1998, ATL introduced another advance based on its harmonic imaging technology called Pulse Inversion Harmonic Imaging.