Koninklijke Philips Corporation N.v.

Atl Ultrasound, Inc.

Advanced Technology Laboratories, Inc.

Thanasis Loupas

Aline Laure Criton

Ashraf Saad

Steven John Hill

David Hull

David N Roundhill

David W Rust

Roy B Peterson

Helen Frances Routh

Daniel C Schmiesing

Marshall T Robinson

Patrick Rene' Pesque

Charles Powrie

An ultrasound system performs duplex colorflow and spectral Doppler imaging, with the spectral Doppler interrogation performed at a sample volume location shown on the colorflow image. The colorflow image is displayed in a color box overlaid on a co-registered B mode image. A color box position and steering angle processor analyzes the spatial Doppler data and automatically sets the color box angle and location over a blood vessel for optimal Doppler sensitivity and accuracy. The processor may also automatically set the flow angle correction cursor in alignment with the direction of flow. In a preferred embodiment these optimization adjustments are made automatically and continuously as a user pauses at points for Doppler measurements along a length of the blood vessel.

Ultrasound system with dynamically automated doppler flow settings as a sample volume is moved

Ultrasound system with automated Doppler flow settings

An ultrasonic diagnostic imaging system and method are described by which a user can delineate a region of interest () in a colorflow Doppler image. The ultrasound system processes the Doppler pixel information of the region of interest () to produce a spectrogram illustrating motion at the region of interest () as a function of time. In a preferred embodiment the Doppler pixel information is processed by histograms to produce the spectrogram data.

Flow spectrograms synthesized from ultrasonic flow color doppler information

An ultrasonic diagnostic imaging system and method are described which perform spatial compounding of tissue motion or flow information. The resultant images not only reduce speckle artifacts, but also reduce dropout caused by the angular dependence of Doppler information. Compound images may be formed using both B mode and Doppler information acquired in a time interleaved manner, either one or both of which may be spatially compounded. The techniques of the present invention may be employed to reduce multiline artifacts and to produce real time compound images at high frame rates of display.

Spatial compounding with ultrasonic doppler signal information

Multi-mode ultrasonic images are formed by processing the ultrasonic echoes from a single transmit pulse in parallel to display both tissue and motion. In a preferred embodiment short transmit bursts are employed to produce echo ensembles for tissue motion imaging. At least one sequence of echoes of the ensemble is also B mode processed for display of tissue structure. Preferably both the B mode and motion processing are performed in parallel. A substantially constant pulse repetition frequency reduces artifact development when imaging in the two modes from the same transmit pulse.

Coincident tissue and motion ultrasonic diagnostic imaging

An ultrasonic diagnostic imaging system and method are described by which a fundamental frequency signal is transmitted into the body and harmonic (nonlinear) echo returns are received from the transmission. The harmonic echo signals are Doppler processed and displayed. The harmonic Doppler signals may be displayed alone, or in combination with a fundamental frequency or harmonic grayscale image. In a preferred embodiment harmonic signals returned from moving tissue are segmented on an intensity or frequency basis and displayed. The inventive apparatus and method provide highly resolved ultrasonic images of moving tissue which are substantially unobscured by image clutter from structures or tissue in the near field.

Ultrasonic harmonic doppler imaging

The Doppler imaging of blood flow or slowly moving tissue at high frame rates of display is performed by oversampled acquisition of a Doppler ensemble from the body and display of Doppler information within a display range of Doppler values which is less than the range defined by said rate of oversampling. Preferably, Doppler information is acquired at the highest PRF for the depth of Doppler imaging. In one embodiment Doppler data is scaled in proportion to the ratio of the acquisition PRF to the display PRF. Alternatively, an embodiment of the present invention performs Doppler estimation by autocorrelation or spectral analysis which operates upon nonadjacent samples in the Doppler ensemble.

Ultrasonic doppler imaging at high frame rates of display

A method and apparatus are presented for tracing the border of tissue through temporally acquired scanlines comprising the steps of reducing noise in the scanlines, producing a map of tissue edges from the scanlines, denoting a tissue border to be traced, and using velocity information corresponding to tissue edges to trace the denoted border.

Growing community of inventors

Athens, Greece

Thanasis Loupas