Systems and methods for improving ultrasound image quality by applying weighting factors
First Claim
1. An ultrasound imaging system, comprising:
- a first transmit aperture and a second transmit aperture configured to transmit first and second unfocused circular wave front ultrasound signals into a region of interest;
a first receive aperture configured to receive echoes of the first and second unfocused circular wave front ultrasound signals;
a controller configured to form a first image layer from received echoes of the first unfocused circular wave front ultrasound signal, and configured to form a second image layer from received echoes of the second unfocused circular wave front ultrasound signal;
the controller being further configured to determine a value of a weighting factor by;
determining a first distance from one of the first or second transmit apertures to a point represented by at least one pixel;
determining a second distance from the point to the first receive aperture;
summing the first distance and the second distance to obtain a total path length; and
determining the weighting factor as a mathematical function of the total path length;
the controller being further configured to apply the weighting factor to the at least one pixel of the first image layer to obtain a modified first image layer, and to combine the modified first image layer with the second image layer to form a combined image; and
a display device configured to display the combined image.
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Accused Products
Abstract
Systems and methods for improving the quality of ultrasound images made up of a combination of multiple sub-images include giving more weight to sub-image information that is more likely to improve a combined image quality. Weighting factor information may be determined from the geometry (e.g., angle or path length) of a location of one or more specific transducer elements relative to a specific point within a region of interest or a region of an image. In some embodiments, any given pixel (or other discrete region of an image) may be formed by combining received echo data in a manner that gives more weight to data that is likely to improve image quality, and/or discounting or ignoring data that is likely to detract from image quality (e.g., by introducing noise or by increasing point spread).
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Citations
12 Claims
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1. An ultrasound imaging system, comprising:
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a first transmit aperture and a second transmit aperture configured to transmit first and second unfocused circular wave front ultrasound signals into a region of interest; a first receive aperture configured to receive echoes of the first and second unfocused circular wave front ultrasound signals; a controller configured to form a first image layer from received echoes of the first unfocused circular wave front ultrasound signal, and configured to form a second image layer from received echoes of the second unfocused circular wave front ultrasound signal; the controller being further configured to determine a value of a weighting factor by; determining a first distance from one of the first or second transmit apertures to a point represented by at least one pixel; determining a second distance from the point to the first receive aperture; summing the first distance and the second distance to obtain a total path length; and determining the weighting factor as a mathematical function of the total path length; the controller being further configured to apply the weighting factor to the at least one pixel of the first image layer to obtain a modified first image layer, and to combine the modified first image layer with the second image layer to form a combined image; and a display device configured to display the combined image. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
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7. An ultrasound imaging system, comprising:
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a first transmit aperture configured to transmit first unfocused circular wave front ultrasound signals at a first frequency into a region of interest, and configured to transmit second unfocused circular wave front ultrasound signals at a second frequency into the region of interest, the first frequency being greater than the second frequency; a first receive aperture configured to receive echoes of the first and second unfocused circular wave front ultrasound signals; a controller configured to form a first image layer from received echoes of the first unfocused circular wave front ultrasound signal, and configured to form a second image layer from received echoes of the second unfocused circular wave front ultrasound signal, the controller being further configured to apply a weighting factor to at least one pixel of the first image layer to obtain a modified first image layer, the weighting factor being based on a difference between the first frequency and the second frequency, and the controller being configured to combine the modified first image layer with the second image layer to form a combined image; and a display device configured to display the combined image. - View Dependent Claims (8, 9, 10, 11, 12)
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Specification