Patent US 6,409,668

The invention relates to a device and method for examining female mammals using at least one displaceable ultrasonic transducer which is disposed for scanning level layer areas and with which ultrasonic beams can be injected into at least one mammal via a coupling medium. The or each ultrasonic transducer can be displaced on a predetermined path length by means of a transporting unit so that three-dimensional ultrasound images which are electronically filed in a storage area can be generated by a computer-aided assignment of a data value, said value corresponding to the offset, to each layer image of an image sequence of layer levels of the or ski each mammal, said levels running parallel to one another. In order to reduce artifacts, differential images are calculated which are then subtracted from the original ultrasound image in a sign-specific manner. In addition, ultrasound images which are recorded by a variably tilted linear scanner are mapped on a common coordinate system or are projected in the direction of recording which is determined by the angle of tilt. Afterwards, said images are freed of artifacts min the same manner by means of a subtraction method.