Ultrasound imaging system

• US 7,223,242 B2
• Filed: 09/27/2002
• Issued: 05/29/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 09/28/2001
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Teratech Corporation
• Original Assignee: Teratech Corporation
• Inventors: He, Xingbai, Chiang, Alice M., Kischell, Eric R., Chang, Peter P.
• Primary Examiner(s): Jaworski; Francis J.
• Application Number:
  US10/259,251
• Publication Number:
  US 20030100833A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,705 Days
• Field of Search: 600/437, 600/472, 600/455, 600/451, 600/116, 600/493, 600/459, 600/300, 600/488, 600/461, 600/460, 600/443, 600/447, 600/441, 600/443.4, 600/47, 600454-458, 128/916, 738/612.5, 700 4- 5, 700/73, 701 18- 19, 701/48, 708/5, 710/69, 712/2, 712/7, 712 20- 22
• US Class Current: 600/454
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 8/065 to determine blood output from the heart in general A61B5/029
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 8/4427 Device being portable or laptop-like
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 8/463 characterised by displaying multiple images or images and diagnostic data on one display composite display in devices for short-range imaging with acoustic waves G01S7/52074
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 8/486 involving arbitrary m-mode
• 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 8/54 Control of the diagnostic device
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 8/56 Details of data transmission or power supply
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 15/584 with measures taken for suppressing velocity ambiguities, i.e. anti-aliasing
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 15/8979 Combined Doppler and pulse-echo imaging systems
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 15/8981 Discriminating between fixed and moving objects or between objects moving at different speeds, e.g. wall clutter filter
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 7/003 Transmission of data between radar, sonar or lidar systems and remote stations
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 7/52044 Scan converters
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 7/52063 Sector scan display
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 7/52071 Multicolour displays; using colour coding; Optimising colour or information content in displays, e.g. parametric imaging
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 7/5208 with integration of processing functions inside probe or scanhead
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 7/52082 involving a modular construction, e.g. a computer with short range imaging equipment modular ultrasonic medical diagnostic devices A61B8/4411
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 7/52084 related to particular user interfaces special user input means for ultrasonic medical diagnostic devices A61B8/467

Abstract

The present invention is directed to an ultrasound imaging system and method for Doppler processing of data. The ultrasonic imaging system efficiently addresses the data computational and processing needs of Doppler processing. Software executable sequences in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention determines the phase shift and the auto-correlation phase of filtered image data. In a preferred embodiment, the system of ultrasonic imaging also includes a sequence of instructions for Doppler processing that provides the functions for demodulation, Gauss Match filtering, auto-correlation calculation, phase shift calculation, frame averaging, and scan conversion implemented with Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) or Multiple Instruction Multiple Data (MIMD) instructions.

In a preferred embodiment, the ultrasound imaging system of the present invention includes a processing module; and memory operable coupled to the processing module, wherein the memory stores operational instructions that cause the processing module to map serial data to vector representation, calculate an auto-correlation function of the data, calculate a phase shift of the auto-correlation function to generate a monotonic function covering all values of the phase shift corresponding to a range of Doppler velocities and display the resultant images, for example, as color images.

Claims

1. A ultrasound system for scanning a region of interest with ultrasound energy to image a fluid moving within the region of interest comprising:

a transducer array;

a data processing system connected to the transducer array and including a Doppler processing system having at least one parallel computing element, and a memory coupled to the at least one parallel computing element, the memory having stored therein a sequence of instructions to vectorize radio frequency serial input data for parallel processing, to adjust the pulse repetition frequency and to execute color Doppler processing.

2. The ultrasound system of claim 1, wherein the at least one parallel computing element comprises a multiplier and an adder.

3. The ultrasound system of claim 1, wherein the at least one parallel computing element executes at least one of Single Instruction Multiple Data instructions and Multiple Instruction Multiple Data instructions.

4. The ultrasound system of claim 1, wherein Doppler processing is executed in a computation device having an MMX or floating point processor.

5. The ultrasound system of claim 1, wherein the Doppler processing further comprises directional power Doppler, power Doppler and pulsed wave Doppler and provides corresponding images.

6. The ultrasound system of claim 1, further comprising adjustable controls for one of at least scan area selection, velocity display, steering angles, color inversion, color gain, color priority, color persistence, color baseline and frame rate.

7. In an ultrasound system for Doppler processing, a method for imaging a region of interest comprising of:

providing a transducer array for capturing data from a region of interest;

providing a data processing system coupled to the transducer array and having a microprocessor with at least one parallel processing element and a memory coupled to the microprocessor having stored therein a sequence of instructions to vectorize radio frequency serial input data for parallel processing and execute Doppler processing including one of color Doppler, directional power Doppler, power Doppler and pulsed wave Doppler;

Selectively adjusting the pulse repetition frequency; and

performing a Doppler processing operation to form an image of the region of interest.

8. A computer readable medium having stored therein instructions for causing a processing unit to execute the steps of the method of claim 7.

9. The method for imaging a region of interest of claim 7, wherein the sequence of instructions to vectorize the serial input data further comprises of:

mapping a stream of serial RF data to a vector representation;

determining an auto-correlation function of the data; and

determining a phase shift of the auto-correlation function to generate a monotonic function for all values of the phase shift corresponding to a range of Doppler velocities.

10. The method of imaging a region of interest of claim 9, wherein the sequence of instructions further comprises:

demodulating the data to obtain in-phase and quadrature sample data;

filtering the data to remove low frequency signals;

averaging a plurality of frames of data;

converting phase shift data to an index;

converting the phase shift data from scan to raster coordinates; and

displaying a plurality of images.

11. The method for imaging a region of interest of claim 7, wherein at least one parallel processing element comprises a multiplier and an adder.

12. The method for imaging a region of interest of claim 7, wherein at least one parallel processing element executes at least one of Single Instruction Multiple Data instructions and Multiple Instruction Multiple Data instructions.

13. The method for imaging a region of interest of claim 7, wherein the Doppler processing further comprises displaying at least one of the presence, direction, and relative velocity of blood flow, perfusion and contour of lumens.

14. The method of imaging a region of interest of claim 7, further comprising providing adjustable controls for at least one of scan area selection, velocity display, steering angles, color inversion, color gain, color priority, color persistence, color baseline and frame rate.

15. The method of claim 7 further comprising processing floating point values.

16. An ultrasound imaging apparatus comprising:

at least one processing module; and

memory operable coupled to the at least one processing module, wherein the memory stores operational instructions that cause the at least one processing module to;

map serial data to vector representation;

calculate an auto-correlation function of the data;

calculate a phase shift of the auto-correlation function to generate a monotonic function for all values of the phase shift corresponding to a range of Doppler velocities;

convert the phase shift to an index; and

display a plurality of images including at least one of color Doppler, directional power Doppler, power Doppler and pulsed wave Doppler.

17. The apparatus of claim 16, wherein the apparatus further comprises a handheld probe operable to transmit an ultrasound image and to obtain data indicative of the flow characteristics of the region of interest.

18. The apparatus of claim 16, wherein the plurality of images includes color Doppler images, directional power Doppler images, power Doppler images and pulsed wave Doppler images.

19. The apparatus of claim 16, further comprising adjustable controls for one of at least scan area selection, velocity display, steering angles, color inversion, color gain, color priority, color persistence, color baseline and frame rate.

20. The apparatus of claim 16 further comprising demodulating the data to obtain in phase and quadrature sample data.