General Electric Company

Mark P Feilen

David Leo McDaniel

John Jay Williams

Michael Joseph Cook

Mark Kenneth Limkeman

Dershan Luo

Edwin L Oswalt

Richard Yung Chiao

Cynthia A Owen

Gregory R Bashford

A method of calibrating detectors in a detector ring of a PET scanner, each detector including a plurality of crystals, the PET scanner having a field of view, is disclosed. The method comprises collecting timing data indicative of coincidence events occurring between each pair of crystals within the field of view. The method further comprises determining a detector adjustment value for each detector, determining a crystal adjustment value for each crystal in each detector, and discretizing the crystal adjustment value for each crystal to produce a discretized crystal adjustment value for each crystal. Lastly, the method comprises calibrating each detector by applying the discretized crystal adjustment value for each crystal in each detector to the collected timing data indicative of coincidence events.

Crystal-based coincidence timing calibration method

Flash artifacts in ultrasound flow images are suppressed to achieve enhanced flow discrimination. Flash artifacts typically occur as regions of elevated signal strength (brightness or equivalent color) within an image. A flash suppression algorithm includes the steps of estimating the flash within an image and then suppressing the estimated flash. The mechanism for flash suppression is spatial filtering. An extension of this basic method uses information from adjacent frames to estimate the flash and/or to smooth the resulting image sequence. Temporal information from adjacent frames is used as an adjunct to improve performance.

Flash artifact suppression in two-dimensional ultrasound imaging

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Mukwonago, WI, United States of America

Mark P Feilen