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Abstract

An ultrasound imaging system is provided with a vector compounder and a vector splicer for respectively compounding and splicing vector data from multiple firings along a scan line to improve image quality. The compounder consists of an accumulator which sums the vector data of at least two vector data sets and then scales the summed vector data by a scaling factor. Preferably, the scaling factor equals 1/n, where n is the number of vector data sets being summed. The splicer splices compounded vector data to form a single output vector data set in accordance with a weighting function that splices vector data from a first compounded vector data set for a firing having a first range of maximum focus and vector data from a second compounded vector data set for a firing having a second range of maximum focus with a transition region therebetween. The vector data from the first and second compounded vector data sets are combined in the transition region using a piecewise linear weighting function. The piecewise linear weighting function uses a first set of weighting factors which increase linearly in magnitude from a number less than 1.0 to 1.0 and a second set of weighting factors which decrease linearly in magnitude from 1.0 to a number less than 1.0, the weighting factors of the first and second sets forming pairs of weighting factors having magnitudes the sum of which equals 1.0.

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