The present invention relates to devices and methods for measuring vascular deficiency using Doppler ultrasound detection. Embodiments can be used to monitor the condition of surgical tissue flaps or other conditions in which obstruction in the vascular system can impact patient health. The systems can include a Doppler ultrasound probe, a color probe, a temperature probe, and/or other suitable probes to measure blood volume and perfusion status of a tissue region. The systems and methods can be used to monitor flaps after flap transplant surgeries. The systems and methods can automatedly assess tissue condition and alert the patient or medical staff if the condition has fallen below a threshold indicating occlusion of a blood vessel. One or more additional sensors can be integrated into a probe to measure vascular conditions and a metric can be computed based on sensed data.

Systems, devices, and methods are provided to provide workflow assistance to an operator during a medical imaging procedure, such as a Doppler ultrasound evaluation of a body vessel of a subject. A sensor such as a gyroscope (128) may be integrated in an external ultrasound probe (102). Workflow assistance may be provided to position the ultrasound probe (102) to make accurate flow measurements of fluid within the vessel, such as by coupling system color flow information with gyroscope angles. The workflow assistance may also assist a user in identifying a perpendicular orientation of the ultrasound to be used as a reference in making Doppler measurements. The system may also be used to create a vessel map.

An ultrasound imaging system may include a probe, a transmitting circuit which may excite the probe to transmit ultrasound beams towards a scanning target in at least three ultrasound propagation directions; a receiving circuit and a beamforming unit which may respectively receive the echoes of the ultrasound beams in the ultrasound propagation directions to obtain the echo signals in each of the ultrasound propagation directions; a data processing unit which may obtain velocity vectors of target points in the scanning target using the echo signals in each of the ultrasound propagation directions and obtain ultrasound images of at least a portion of the scanning target using the echo signals; and a display which may display the velocity vectors and the ultrasound images.

Exemplary embodiments provide systems and methods for portable medical ultrasound imaging. Certain embodiments provide a multi-chip module for an ultrasound engine of a portable medical ultrasound imaging system, in which a transmit/receive chip, an amplifier chip and a beamformer chip are assembled in a vertically stacked configuration. Exemplary embodiments also provide an ultrasound engine circuit board including one or more multi-chip modules, and a portable medical ultrasound imaging system including an ultrasound engine circuit board with one or more multi-chip modules. Exemplary embodiments also provide methods for fabricating and assembling multi-chip modules as taught herein. A single circuit board of an ultrasound engine with one or more multi-chip modules may include 16 to 128 channels in some embodiments. Due to the vertical stacking arrangement of the multi-chip modules, a 128-channel ultrasound engine circuit board can be assembled within exemplary planar dimensions of about 10 cm×about 10 cm.

A difference between a detected motion and a reference motion is automatically displayed. The reference motion is a modeled motion of an organ, a base line motion of an organ or another portion of an organ. A deviation in motion amplitude, angle or both angle and amplitude from a reference set may more easily identify abnormal or normal motion of the organ.

Apparatus for adaptively scheduling ultrasound device actions includes a probe interface, a beamer, a receiver, a processor, and a memory. The probe interface may interface with probe units to transmit signals generated by the beamer to the probe units and to receive data signals from the probe units. The processor may be coupled to the probe interface, the beamer, and the receiver. The memory may store instructions, which when executed by the processor, causes the processor to generate a task list that includes a timed beam firing sequence and to signal to the beamer to generate signals to the probe units associated with the plurality of task actions. The task list may include a plurality of task actions associated with probe units, and the processor may signal to the beamer in accordance with the timed beam firing sequence. Other embodiments are also described.

Provided are an ultrasound probe, an ultrasound imaging apparatus, an ultrasound imaging system including the ultrasound imaging apparatus, and a method of controlling the ultrasound imaging apparatus. In accordance with one aspect, the ultrasound probe includes a transducer configured to receive an echo ultrasound signal by emitting a plane wave at least three times at different emission angles or at emission angles which are dependent on each other; and a probe controller configured to obtain an ultrasound image by determining a Doppler shift frequency from the received echo ultrasound signal and calculating at least one of a speed of an object and a speed of the object in each of directions on the basis of the determined Doppler shift frequency and either the different emission angles or the dependent emission angles.

A method for performing shear wave elastography imaging of an observation field in a medium, the method including shear wave imaging steps to acquire sets of shear wave propagation parameters, the method further including a reliability indicator determining step during which a reliability indicator of the shear wave elastography imaging of the observation field is determined.

A measuring apparatus configured to measure the biological information includes a light emitter configured to emit measuring light, a light receiver including a plurality of light receiving areas that receive scattering light of the measuring light from a measured part, and a controller configured to generate the biological information based on output from the plurality of light receiving areas.

Example apparatus, systems, and methods for image data processing are disclosed and described. An example system includes an image capturer to facilitate capture of an image. The example system includes a Doppler spectrum recorder to record a Doppler spectrum. The example system includes a study type inferrer to infer a study type associated with the Doppler spectrum by: processing the Doppler spectrum using at least one neural network to generate a first probability distribution among study type classifications; processing the image using the at least one neural network to generate a second probability distribution among the study type classifications; and combining the first probability distribution and the second probability distribution to infer a study type.