Dynamic power doppler imaging in ultrasound

• US 10,624,611 B2
• Filed: 08/29/2014
• Issued: 04/21/2020
• Est. Priority Date: 08/29/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Siemens Medical Solutions USA Incorporated (Siemens AG)
• Original Assignee: Siemens Medical Solutions USA Incorporated (Siemens AG)
• Inventors: Seo, Chi Hyung, Wong, King Yuen
• Primary Examiner(s): Behringer, Luther
• Application Number:
  US14/473,652
• Publication Number:
  US 20160058421A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,062 Days
• Field of Search: 600453
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 8/06 Measuring blood flow measuring volume flow in general G01F, e.g. G01F1/66, G01F1/72; measuring speed of fluids in general G01P5/00
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 8/461 Displaying means of special interest
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 8/483 involving the acquisition of a 3D volume of data
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 8/488 involving Doppler signals
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 8/5207 involving processing of raw data to produce diagnostic data, e.g. for generating an image reconstruction G06T11/00
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 8/5223 for extracting a diagnostic or physiological parameter from medical diagnostic data for algorithms to analyse biomedical images G06T7/0012
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 50/30 for calculating health indices; for individual health risk assessment

Abstract

For Doppler imaging in ultrasound, a single parameter is formed from both power and velocity. In any combination function, a derivative of velocity and/or velocity are combined with power. The resulting value is used to look-up a color from a one-dimensional color map.

Claims

1. A method for Doppler imaging in ultrasound, the method comprising:

acquiring, with an ultrasound scanner, ultrasound data representing a region of a patient;

estimating, with a Doppler processor, powers of flow and velocities of flow from the ultrasound data for each of different locations in the region;

calculating spatial derivatives of the velocities;

combining the spatial derivatives of the velocities with the powers, the combining forming single values where each of the single values is a sum of one of the spatial derivatives of the velocity with one of the powers and with an offset, the offset being set to be greater than a highest positive or negative ones of the spatial derivatives of the velocities to prevent a sign change due to the sum;

mapping results of the combining to colors; and

generating an image of the region from the colors.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein acquiring comprises scanning the patient with ultrasound.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein estimating comprises estimating the powers and velocities from Doppler shifts.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein calculating comprises calculating gradients along one or more dimensions.

5. The method of claim 4 wherein calculating the gradients comprises, for each location, calculating the gradients along two dimensions from the location and summing the gradients along the two dimensions for the location, the sum being the spatial derivative of each location.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein calculating comprises calculating the spatial derivative of the velocity for each of the locations, and wherein combining comprises summing, for each of the locations, the power for the location with the spatial derivative for each of the locations.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein combining comprises relatively weighting the spatial derivatives and the powers.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein combining comprises forming one of the single values as the result for each of the locations and wherein mapping comprises mapping only the formed single value to the color for each of the locations.

9. The method of claim 1 wherein combining with the function includes determining the offset as greater than the highest negative value of the spatial derivatives weighted by any weight applied to the spatial derivatives.

10. The method of claim 1 wherein mapping comprises mapping with a one-dimensional color map.

11. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

phase unwrapping the velocities prior to calculating the spatial derivatives.

12. The method of claim 1 wherein combining comprises combining the spatial derivatives, the powers, and the velocities.

13. The method of claim 12 wherein combining comprises combining with relative weighting between the spatial derivatives, powers, and velocities and with an offset.

14. A non-transitory computer readable storage medium having stored therein data representing instructions executable by a programmed processor for Doppler imaging in ultrasound, the storage medium comprising instructions for:

calculating spatial gradients for velocity values estimated for ultrasound scan locations in a patient;

summing the spatial gradients, power values, the velocity values and an offset, the power values estimated for the ultrasound scan locations, the offset being set to be greater than a highest positive or negative one of the spatial gradients or velocity values;

mapping results of the summing to color values; and

generating a color flow image with the color values.

15. The non-transitory computer readable storage medium of claim 14 further comprising phase unwrapping the velocity values prior to summing.

16. The non-transitory computer readable storage medium of claim 14 wherein summing comprises weighted summing of the spatial gradients, the power values, the velocity values and the offset.

17. The non-transitory computer readable storage medium of claim 14 wherein mapping comprises mapping with a one-dimensional color map with only positive or only negative values.

18. A system for Doppler imaging in ultrasound, the system comprising:

a transducer and beamformer for scanning a scan region;

a Doppler estimator configured to estimate energies and velocity samples of the scan region at different locations, one of the energies and one of the velocity samples being estimated for each of the locations;

a processor configured to calculate, for each of the different locations, a single value of a parameter that is a sum of the energy for each location and derivative of velocity sample for each location, the derivative of the velocity samples being a local spatial derivative from the velocity samples in a kernel for locations distributed in two or more different directions relative to and including the location, the kernel defining the spatial distribution about the location;

a memory configured to store a one-dimensional map of colors indexed by the parameter.

19. The system of claim 18 wherein the function includes the velocities as a variable.