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:
Apr. 07, 1998
Filed:
Dec. 30, 1996
David John Muzilla, Mukwonago, WI (US);
Edgar Joseph Alexander, Milwaukee, WI (US);
Patricia Schubert, Milwaukee, WI (US);
General Electric Company, Milwaukee, WI (US);
Abstract
An ultrasound imaging system for displaying edge-enhanced topographic flow power data surrounded by B-mode anatomical data without masking out any significant edge-enhanced topographic flow power data and without displaying any significant flow power background noise. An improved high-pass topographic filter is used to enhance the edges of the flow in the displayed image in both the horizontal (lateral) and vertical (range) directions. The two-dimensional topographic filter is a digital filter with three taps in each dimension and is incorporated in the acoustic line memory. Also, the raw flow power data is compressed down to 7 bits in such a way that the transfer function is shifted away from zero input power. In this way, the system gain can be set to effectively zero out most of the background noise. After the flow power data passes through the high-pass topographic filter, it is mapped to values between -128 and +127 (8 bits) with zero in the middle. The system gain is set so background flow power noise will be mapped relatively uniformly to within .+-.2 of zero out of the topographic filter. The center of the color map (within .+-.2 of zero) is masked out so that any edge-enhanced topographic flow power that maps within this range is not displayed and, instead, the B-mode imagery is displayed.