Siemens Medical Solutions Usa, Inc.

Liang Zhai

Bimba Rao

Rickard C Loftman

Bruce A McDermott

Wilko Gerwin Wilkening

Henry G Pavy

Wilko Wilkening

Color Doppler imaging with line artifact reduction is provided in multi-beam scanning. Doppler estimates representing the same spatial location but calculated from spatially distinctive transmit beam groups are combined through weighted linear interpolation. Methods of calculating the linear interpolation weights are provided based on geometric relationships and optimization functions. Complete overlapping and superposition among receive beams in the interpolation region are not required. Partial interpolation among the receive beams, where only the estimates of the outer receive scan lines may overlap and be interpolated while estimates for scan lines closer to the transmit scan line are not interpolated, allowing for more rapid frame rate.

Color doppler imaging with line artifact reduction

A heart rate monitor provides a pulse or heartbeat, but without the on-going or continuous phase signal of ECG and/or with a delay relative to the actual heartbeat. For phase determination in echocardiography, the heartbeat from the heart rate monitor is used to assist in identification of phase from acquired ultrasound data. Rather than relying on just ECG or just image processing, the worn or handheld heart rate monitor is used to simplify the image process-based identification of phase.

Heart rate assistance for phase determination in echocardiography

Coherent combination of ultrasound data for collinear receive beams adapts to the ultrasound data. Beam-to-beam coherence metrics, such as correlation coefficient and/or phase change or functions of these parameters, are used to adapt weighting of the ultrasound data for the receive beams prior to combination or to adapt the results of the combination.

Adaptive post beamformation synthetic aperture for ultrasound imaging

Line artifact reduction is provided in multi-beam scanning for Doppler imaging. An analytic solution uses estimated velocities for collocated receive scan lines from different transmit beams to reduce or remove the biases caused by multi-beam receive. For each location, a line or curve is fit to the estimated velocities as a function of distance of the transmit scan lines to the location. The velocity at an intercept of this line with the distance of zero (intercept with the origin) indicates the unbiased velocity. This approach allows a solution even where all of the velocity estimates have a bias with the same sign, such as due to the location being on a same side of the different transmit scan lines.

Motion imaging with multiple parallel receive beams

Guidance is provided in stress echocardiography. The recovery time after cessation of the stress is predicted using patient-specific information. The prediction may assist the user in acquiring images of the heart for stress echocardiography during the patient-relevant period, avoid unnecessary rush, and/or avoid acquisition of less useful images.

Adaptive timing guidance in stress echocardiography

For volume ultrasound imaging, the view direction for rendering a volume image is used. In one approach, imaging parameters for acquiring the volume data prior to rendering are set based on the view direction. For the resolution example, the data for imaging is acquired with the resolution in a view plane greater than resolution along the ray tracing direction. In another approach, sets of data representing a volume are acquired or formed with different settings. The sets are weighted based on the view direction and combined. For the resolution example, an image rendered from the combined data may have greater resolution in the view plane where the set of data with greater resolution in that view plane is weighted more in the combination.

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Castro Valley, CA, United States of America

Liang Zhai