ULTRASOUND SYSTEM AND METHOD OF VESSEL IDENTIFICATION

• US 20180014810A1
• Filed: 03/31/2016
• Published: 01/18/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 04/03/2015
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. (Koninklijke Philips N.V.)
• Original Assignee: Koninklijke Philips N.V.
• Inventors: Chen, Jiangang, Raju, Balasundar Iyyavu, Leyvi, Evgeniy
• Granted Patent: US 10,722,209 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• 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 8/085 for locating body or organic structures, e.g. tumours, calculi, blood vessels, nodules
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 8/0891 for diagnosis of blood vessels
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 8/14 Echo-tomography
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 8/4494 characterised by the arrangement of the transducer elements devices for short-range imaging using particular transducer elements arrangements under G01S15/8909; arrangements of transducers in generation of mechanical vibrations of infrasonic, sonic or ultrasonic frequency B06B1/0607
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 8/469 for selection of a region of interest
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 8/481 involving the use of contrast agent, e.g. microbubbles introduced into the bloodstream analysis of echo signal exploiting properties of a contrast enhancer in devices for short-range imaging with acoustic waves G01S7/52039
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 8/488 involving Doppler signals
• 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: A61B 8/523 for generating planar views from image data in a user selectable plane not corresponding to the acquisition plane
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 8/5246 combining images from the same or different imaging techniques, e.g. color Doppler and B-mode
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 8/5284 involving retrospective matching to a physiological signal
• CPC Class Codes: G01B 17/00 Measuring arrangements characterised by the use of infrasonic, sonic or ultrasonic vibrations
• CPC Class Codes: G01N 2291/017 Doppler techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G01N 2291/02466 Biological material, e.g. blood
• CPC Class Codes: G01N 29/2406 Electrostatic or capacitive probes, e.g. electret or cMUT-probes
• CPC Class Codes: G01N 29/2437 Piezoelectric probes
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 50/30 for calculating health indices; for individual health risk assessment

Abstract

The present invention proposes an ultrasound system and method of identifying a vessel of a subject. The ultrasound system comprises: an ultrasound probe configured to simultaneously acquire a sequence of ultrasound blood flow data frames (such as a sequence of ultrasound Doppler data frames) and a sequence of ultrasound B-mode data frames of a region of interest including the vessel over a predetermined time period; a blood flow region selecting unit configured to select a blood flow region in the sequence of blood flow data frames; and a vessel segmenting unit configured to segment the vessel in at least one frame of the sequence of ultrasound B-mode data frames based on the selected blood flow region. Since there is no need to manually place any seed point for vessel segmentation any more, the user dependency is reduced and a fast measurement is made possible. Furthermore, since the segmentation of the vessel in a B-mode data frame makes use of information from multiple blood flow data frames, more robust, reliable segmentation can be achieved.

Claims

1. An ultrasound system for identifying a vessel of a subject, comprising:

an ultrasound probe configured to simultaneously acquire a sequence of ultrasound blood flow data frames and a sequence of ultrasound B-mode data frames of a region of interest including the vessel over a predetermined time period;

a blood flow region selecting unit configured to detect a blood flow region in each frame of multiple frames in the sequence of ultrasound blood flow data frame, and to select a blood flow region among the detected blood flow regions; and

a vessel segmenting unit configured to segment the vessel in at least one frame of the sequence of ultrasound B-mode data frames based on the selected blood flow region, the at least one frame comprising the ultrasound B-mode data frame temporally corresponding to the ultrasound blood flow data frame in which the selected blood flow region is detected.

2. The ultrasound system of claim 1, wherein the blood flow region selecting unit is further configured to determine a size for the detected blood flow, and to select the blood flow region based on the determined sizes.

3. The ultrasound system of claim 2, wherein the size of the selected blood flow region is the largest size among the detected blood flow regions.

4. The ultrasound system of claim 1, wherein the vessel segmenting unit is further configured to segment the vessel in at least one other frame of the sequence of B-mode data frames by means of tracking the vessel based on the segmented vessel in the at least one frame.

5. The ultrasound system of claim 1, further comprising a vessel feature deriving unit configured to derive a feature indicating a transverse size of the segmented vessel in each of the at least one B-mode data frame.

6. The ultrasound system of claim 5, further comprising a landmark identifying unit, wherein

the landmark identifying unit is configured to identify a landmark in the at least one B-mode data frame;

and

the vessel feature deriving unit is configured to derive the feature based on the identified landmark.

7. The ultrasound system of claim 5, further comprising a respiration identifying unit, wherein

the respiration identifying unit is configured to identify a respiration cycle of the subject;

and

the vessel feature deriving unit is configured to derive the feature based on the identified respiration cycle.

8. The ultrasound system of claim 7, wherein

the vessel segmenting unit is configured to segment the vessel in each of a plurality of data frames of the sequence of ultrasound B-mode data frames;

and

the respiration identifying unit is configured to identify a respiration cycle of the subject based on the segmented vessels in the plurality of data frames.

9. The ultrasound system of claim 1, the ultrasound blood flow data frame is an ultrasound Doppler data frame.

10. The ultrasound system of claim 1, wherein the vessel is an inferior vena cava.

11. The ultrasound system of claim 1, the region of interest is two-dimensional and comprises a longitudinal cross section of the vessel.

12. A method of identifying a vessel of a subject from a sequence of ultrasound blood flow data frames and a sequence of ultrasound B-mode data frames of a region of interest including the vessel which are simultaneously acquired over a predetermined time period, comprising steps of:

detecting a blood flow region in each frame of multiple frames in the sequence of ultrasound blood flow data frame and selecting a blood flow region among the detected blood flow regions; and

segmenting the vessel in at least one frame of the sequence of ultrasound B-mode data frames based on the selected blood flow region, the at least one frame comprising the ultrasound B-mode data frame temporally corresponding to the ultrasound blood flow data frame in which the selected blood flow region is detected.

13. The method of claim 12, further comprising a step of simultaneously acquiring the sequence of ultrasound blood flow data frames and the sequence of ultrasound B-mode data frames of the region of interest including the vessel over the predetermined time period.

15. A computer product, comprising computer program instructions which, when being executed, performs the method of claim 12.

14. A first apparatus for identifying a vessel of a subject, the first apparatus being connectable to one or more second apparatus for providing a sequence of ultrasound blood flow data frames and a sequence of ultrasound B-mode data frames of a region of interest including the vessel which are simultaneously acquired over a predetermined time period, the first apparatus comprising:

a blood flow region selecting unit configured to detect a blood flow region in each frame of multiple frames in the sequence of ultrasound blood flow data frame and to select a blood flow region among the detected blood flow regions; and

a vessel segmenting unit configured to segment the vessel in at least one frame of the sequence of ultrasound B-mode data frames based on the selected blood flow region, the at least one frame comprising the ultrasound B-mode data frame temporally corresponding to the ultrasound blood flow data frame in which the selected blood flow region is detected.