Method for recognition and reduction of blood speckle in blood vessel imaging system
First Claim
Patent Images
1. A method for enhancing an intravascular ultrasonic blood vessel image comprising the steps of:
- directing ultrasonic energy to an intravascular target to produce ultrasonic echoes reflected from said intravascular target;
transforming said ultrasonic echoes into electrical signals;
forming and constructing an image based on amplitude of each said electrical signals by circumferentially and radially sampling the electrical signals, assigning an initial gray scale value to each increment (pixel) in said image;
distinguishing between a first region, a second region, and an edge region by statistical analysis of said pixels in said image;
remapping all pixels in said first region, in said second region, and in said edge region into a full resolution image; and
outputting said full resolution image for display.
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Abstract
In an ultrasound imaging system, ultrasound echoes representing vessel walls are distinguished from ultrasound echoes from blood by using a classifier which employs the mean and variance of the raw data of gray intensities as acquired directly from an ultrasound scanner detector. In a specific embodiment, the statistical parameters of mean and variance are determined in the course of real-time processing and prior to attempted classification and then are used as parameters representing the true image as acquired.
36 Citations
15 Claims
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1. A method for enhancing an intravascular ultrasonic blood vessel image comprising the steps of:
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directing ultrasonic energy to an intravascular target to produce ultrasonic echoes reflected from said intravascular target; transforming said ultrasonic echoes into electrical signals; forming and constructing an image based on amplitude of each said electrical signals by circumferentially and radially sampling the electrical signals, assigning an initial gray scale value to each increment (pixel) in said image; distinguishing between a first region, a second region, and an edge region by statistical analysis of said pixels in said image; remapping all pixels in said first region, in said second region, and in said edge region into a full resolution image; and outputting said full resolution image for display. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15)
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Specification