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Apparatus for ultrasound flow vector imaging and methods thereof

  • US 10,231,695 B2
  • Filed: 11/19/2014
  • Issued: 03/19/2019
  • Est. Priority Date: 11/19/2013
  • Status: Active Grant
First Claim
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1. An ultrasound flow display system comprising:

  • a high-frame-rate broad-view data acquisition unit, which includes an ultrasonic array transducer that transmits a series of ultrasonic unfocused, steered plane waves into a structure at a high rate, the plane waves being transmitted at transmission angles that change after each wave, and said transducer also receives waves reflected from the plane waves by the structure at different receive steering angles;

    memory for storing data of the received waves as frames for angle pairs corresponding to the plane waves transmitted at the transmission angles that change after each wave and the waves reflected from the plane waves by the structure at the different receive steering angles;

    a flow vector estimation unit which filters and averages the data to determine corresponding mean flow estimates for the angle pairs corresponding to the plane waves transmitted at the transmission angles that change after each wave and the waves reflected from the plane waves by the structure at the different receive steering angles;

    a least squares vector estimation circuit, included as part of the flow vector estimation unit, that receives averaged data output including the mean flow estimates and performs regularized frequency shift estimation on each frame and axial-lateral vector component estimation based on least-squares fitting to estimate flow vectors for the structure using the mean flow estimates, wherein the regularized frequency shift estimation comprises identifying frequency and power estimates to create corresponding frequency and power estimates for each frame, modifying corresponding frequency and power estimates if a power estimate of the corresponding frequency and power estimates is below a threshold, and applying phase unwrapping to the corresponding frequency and power estimates; and

    a display rendering circuit that uses the flow vectors for the structure to generate duplex visualization including a primary channel showing color-encoded moving particle projectiles with color code and length corresponding to velocity magnitude of a flow at a particular location in the structure.

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