ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 17 -- United States Patent no. 12,310,790, issued on May 27, was assigned to FUJIFILM Corp. (Tokyo).
"Acoustic coupler and ultrasound imaging method" was invented by Kenichi Kawabata (Tokyo), Hideki Yoshikawa (Tokyo) and Hirozumi Takeshima (Tokyo).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Provided is an acoustic coupler capable of achieving both low elastic modulus and high deformability required for ultrasound imaging. The acoustic coupler is disposed between a probe for transmitting ultrasound waves and a subject, the acoustic coupler comprising a hydrogel including a copolymer that contains water. The copolymer comprises a monofunctional monomer having one ethylenically unsaturat...