CLUTTER FILTERS FOR STRAIN AND OTHER ULTRASONIC DEFORMATION IMAGING

• US 20190029651A1
• Filed: 02/27/2017
• Published: 01/31/2019
• Est. Priority Date: 02/26/2016
• Status: Active Application

• Current Assignee: Koninklijke Philips N.V.
• Original Assignee: Koninklijke Philips N.V.
• Inventors: Patil, Abhay Vijay, Vignon, Francois Guy Gerard Marie, Huang, Sheng-Wen, Dianis, Scott William, Thiele, Karl Erhard
• Application Number:
  US16/077,558
• Publication Number:
  US 20190029651A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 8/0825 for diagnosis of the breast, e.g. mammography
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 8/0883 for diagnosis of the heart
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 8/14 Echo-tomography
• 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 8/467 characterised by special input means
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 8/485 involving measuring strain or elastic properties
• 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: A61B 8/5246 combining images from the same or different imaging techniques, e.g. color Doppler and B-mode
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 8/5276 due to motion
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 15/8915 using a transducer array
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 7/52042 determining elastic properties of the propagation medium or of the reflective target diagnostic techniques involving the measurement of strain A61B8/485
• 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 7/52077 with means for elimination of unwanted signals, e.g. noise or interference

Abstract

An ultrasonic diagnostic imaging system and method filter the data of successive ultrasonic images of moving tissue. At least two successive images are clutter filtered to remove clutter in the image data from stationary objects. The successive images and the filtered successive images are both used to produce displacement images of frame to frame tissue motion, and a quality metric is produced of the quality of the estimated displacement. The displacement image with the best quality metric is selected for further processing such as the production of strain images. The selected displacement image may further be spatially filtered to reduce boundary artifacts.

Claims

1. An ultrasonic diagnostic imaging system comprising:

a source of successive frames of ultrasonic image data of moving tissue;

a clutter filter configured to filter the successive frames to produce successive frames of filtered data of the moving tissue; and

a tissue displacement estimates selector configured to;

estimate first displacements between pixels of the successive frames of ultrasonic image data of the moving tissue to produce a first displacement image and respective first quality metrics for the first displacements;

estimate second displacements between corresponding pixels of the successive frames of the filtered data to produce a second displacement image and respective second quality metrics for the second displacements;

generate a third displacement image comprising estimated displacements selected from the first and second displacements based on a comparison between the respective first and second quality metrics.

2. The ultrasonic diagnostic imaging system of claim 1, further comprising a spatio-temporal filter configured to receive the third displacement image and to spatially filter the third displacement image.

3. The ultrasonic diagnostic imaging system of claim 1, wherein the clutter filter comprises a high pass filter.

4. The ultrasonic diagnostic imaging system of claim 3, wherein the high pass filter is finite impulse response filter.

5. The ultrasonic diagnostic imaging system of claim 3, wherein the high pass filter further is a two-tap filter.

6. The ultrasonic diagnostic imaging system of claim 3, wherein the high pass filter is a three-tap filter.

7. The ultrasonic diagnostic imaging system of claim 3, wherein;

the high pass filter is configured to filter the successive frames of ultrasonic image data in a slow time time.

8. The ultrasonic diagnostic imaging system of claim 1, further comprising a strain estimator configured to generate a strain image comprising strain values estimated from the third displacement image;

a display operable to display the strain image.

9. The ultrasonic diagnostic imaging system of claim 8, wherein the strain estimator further generates the estimated strain values as local estimates of frame-to-frame image deformation.

10. The ultrasonic diagnostic imaging system of claim 9, wherein the frame-to-frame image deformation is produced by physiological motion of a subject being imaged.

11. The ultrasonic diagnostic imaging system of claim 9, further comprising a reference indicator to indicate a location of reference tissue in the image field;

and

a strain ratio processor configured to produce a strain ratio image comprising ratios of strain values at points in the image field to a strain value of the reference tissue.

12. A method for filtering time-sequential ultrasonic images of moving tissue, the method comprising:

acquiring a plurality of time-sequential ultrasonic images of moving tissue;

clutter filtering the plurality time-sequential ultrasonic images to produce a plurality of respective filtered ultrasonic images of the,moving tissue;

estimating first displacements between corresponding pixels of the plurality of time-sequential ultrasonic images and producing a first displacement image and respective first quality metrics for the first displacements;

estimating second displacements between corresponding pixels of the plurality of respective filtered time-sequential ultrasonic images and producing a second displacement image and respective second quality metrics for the second displacement; and

generating a third displacement image comprising estimated displacements by selecting, pixel by pixel, from the first second displacements based on a comparison between the respective first and second quality metrics.

13. The method of claim 12, further comprising spatio-temporal filtering the third displacement image.

15. The method of claim 12, further comprising producing a strain image utilizing the third displacement image.

14. (canceled)