The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Jun. 11, 1996
Filed:
Jun. 30, 1995
Dong-Chyuan Liu, Mercer Island, WA (US);
Siemens Medical Systems, Inc., Iselin, NJ (US);
Abstract
A method for operating a digital computer to suppress reverberation artifacts in an ultrasound image. The image includes an ordered array of pixels, each the pixel corresponding to the intensity of the echo generated by a corresponding voxel in an ultrasound energy field. The ordered array has axial and lateral directions defined therein, the axial direction corresponding to voxels on the same radial line from a transducer used to generate the ultrasound energy field. The method starts by dividing the image into a plurality of segmentation blocks thereby generating an ordered array of segmentation blocks. The columns of the segmentation block array are chosen such that all segmentation blocks in the same column correspond to the same axial direction in the ultrasound image. In the preferred embodiment of the present invention, at least one segmentation block is classified as having a strong edge. The method of the present invention finds a first segmentation block that is classified as a strong edge, and then finds a second segmentation block which is not classified as a strong edge in the column containing the first segmentation block. A spatial frequency domain transformed block is then generated from a processing block containing the second segmentation block, and a modified transformed block generated from the spatial frequency domain transformed block by reducing the amplitude of selected peaks in the transformed block. Finally, a new second segmentation block is generated by computing the inverse spatial frequency transform of the modified transform block.