A method for ultrasound imaging a target region with an ultrasound system having an ultrasound transducer array with a plurality of ultrasound elements thereon includes: (a) transmitting an ultrasound tracking beam from at least a subset of the plurality of elements of the array to the target region, each of the subset of the plurality of elements emitting a signal of the tracking beam with a respective transmission time shift; (b) receiving a plurality of echo signals at at least of the subset of the plurality of elements of the array, each echo signal being responsive to the tracking pulse; (c) applying the transmission time shift to at at least some of the subset of the respective plurality of elements to the plurality of echo signals received at corresponding ones of the plurality of elements; (d) modifying the transmission time shift and repeating steps (a)-(c) to provide an ultrasound dataset representing a recovered source element domain of the ultrasound dataset; (e) focusing and beamforming the ultrasound dataset to map time signals of the ultrasound dataset and combine channel signals to provide spatial pixel data; and (f) forming an ultrasound image from the spatial pixel data.

Systems and methods for reconstructing, estimating, or otherwise generating unacquired, undetected, unreconstructed, or otherwise unknown ultrasound data using machine learning algorithms are provided. Thus, the systems and methods described in the present disclosure provide for generating unacquired, undetected, unreconstructed, or otherwise unknown data that are not actually and physically acquired with an ultrasound transducer and/or front-end receiver of an ultrasound system.

Encoded transmit signals are provided to an ultrasound array such diverging ultrasound waves are sequentially transmitted. Each diverging ultrasound wave is generated by a respective set of encoded transmit signals, where each set of encoded transmit signals is encoded by a respective row of an N×N invertible orthogonal matrix. Only a selected subset of M rows, with N<M, is employed to encode the transmit signals. Sets of receive signals detected in response to the transmitted diverging ultrasound waves are decoded via a transposed matrix generated based on the invertible orthogonal matrix, with each set of decoded receive signals being associated with insonification via a subset of the ultrasound array elements in the fixed aperture. Synthetic aperture beamforming is performed on the decoded receive signals to generate an ultrasound image.

Systems and methods for removing the bias induced by noise from power Doppler images to achieve improvements of microvessel image contrast are provided. In one example, the noise-induced bias can be suppressed by utilizing the characteristics of uncorrelated noise in the ultrasound image from data acquired or compounded at different transmitting angles. In another example, the noise-induced bias can be suppressed due to the lack of correlation between adjacent ultrasound images. These example implementations may also be combined, as will be described below.

A dual-mode ultrasound system provides real-time imaging and therapy delivery using the same transducer elements of a transducer array. The system may use a multi-channel driver to drive the elements of the array. The system uses a real-time monitoring and feedback image control of the therapy based on imaging data acquired using the dual-mode ultrasound array (DMUA) of transducer elements. Further, for example, multi-modal coded excitation may be used in both imaging and therapy modes. Still further, for example, adaptive, real-time refocusing for improved imaging and therapy can be achieved using, for example, array directivity vectors obtained from DMUA pulse-echo data.

Techniques, systems, and devices are disclosed for synthetic aperture ultrasound imaging using spread-spectrum, wide instantaneous band, coherent, coded waveforms. In one aspect, a method includes synthesizing a composite waveform formed of a plurality of individual orthogonal coded waveforms that are mutually orthogonal to each other, correspond to different frequency bands and including a unique frequency with a corresponding phase; transmitting an acoustic wave based on the composite waveform toward a target from one or more transmitting positions; and receiving at one or more receiving positions acoustic energy returned from at least part of the target corresponding to the transmitted acoustic waveforms, in which the transmitting and receiving positions each include one or both of spatial positions of an array of transducer elements relative to the target and beam phase center positions of the array, and the transmitted acoustic waveforms and the returned acoustic waveforms produce an enlarged effective aperture.

A method for determining a flow acceleration directly from beamformed ultrasound data includes extracting a sub-set of data from the beamformed ultrasound data, wherein the sub-set of data corresponds to predetermined times and predetermined positions of interest, determining the flow acceleration directly from the extracted sub-set of data, and generating a signal indicative of the determined flow acceleration. An apparatus includes a beamformer (112) configured to processes electrical signals indicative of received echoes produced in response to an interaction of a transmitted ultrasound signal with tissue and generate RF data, and an acceleration flow processor (114) configured to directly process the RF data and generate a flow acceleration therefrom.

Methods and systems for suppressing clutter effects in ultrasonic imaging systems are presented. Two or more receive beams with different and distinct beam patterns are employed for each reception boresight and each reception phase center. The clutter suppression processing is applied to the beamformed data, and is based on computing one or more features for each range-gate. These features may include variability features, providing an estimate of the variability of the signal received by the different elements of the transducer array for the range-gate, and/or derivative/slope features that are an estimation of a function of spatial derivatives of the signal received by the different elements of the transducer array for the range-gate.

A reception beamformer 140 makes use of an ultrasound probe that includes N transducers in an azimuth direction, and includes: a partial frame memory 1432 partitioned into M0 azimuth direction×D depth direction addresses, where M0≤N; and a synthesizer 143 that makes a correlation between acoustic line signal line data corresponding to transmission events and addresses of the partial frame memory 1432, synthesizes acoustic line signal line data obtained from transmission events by summing acoustic line signals with data stored at correlation addresses S which have been correlated with the acoustic line signals, and generates acoustic line signal frame data having N lines in the azimuth direction.

An ultrasound imaging system includes an ultrasound transducer array having a plurality of transducer element and a catheter having one or more transmission lines programmably connected to the plurality of transducer elements. The programmable connection between the transmission lines and the plurality of transducer elements defines a synthetic aperture size. The ultrasound imaging system acquires images using an initial synthetic aperture size, detects a relative motion of a target of interest in the acquired images, and adjusts the synthetic aperture size based on the detected relative motion.