A device and method for imaging, measuring and identifying multiphase fluid flow in wellbores using phased array Doppler ultrasound. The device includes a radially-configured or ring-shaped ultrasound transducer that when deployed in a well in Doppler mode can measure the velocity of radially flowing fluids in the wellbore and generate a 3D image of radial flow in the wellbore, including flowback into the wellbore after fracturing operations, or flow leaving the wellbore during water injection operations. The ring-shaped ultrasound transducer can also simultaneously operate in a B-mode to generate a B-mode image of the wellbore liner upon which the Doppler image can be overlaid. The device may also include a forward facing ultrasound transducer either instead of or in place of the ring-shaped transducer for obtaining information and images on axial flow in the wellbore in Doppler mode, and the location of phase boundaries and phase locations in B-mode.

An ultrasound system is disclosed comprising an ultrasound transducer array (100) comprising a plurality of ultrasound transducer cells (130), each of said cell having an independently adjustable position and/or orientation such as to conform an ultrasound transmitting surface of the cell to a region of a body and a controller (140). The controller is configured to register the respective ultrasound transducer cells by simultaneously operating at least two ultrasound transducer cells in a transmit mode in which the cells transmit distinguishable ultrasound signals and operating the remaining ultrasound transducer cells in a receive mode. The controller extracts time-of-flight information of the respective ultrasound signals between transmitter and receiver and by systematically selecting different ultrasound transducer cells as transmitters, the controller collects sufficient time-of-flight information from which the respective position and/or relative orientation of the ultrasound transducer cells within the ultrasound transducer array may be derived. A method for operating the ultrasound system in this manner as well as a computer program product is also disclosed.

An ultrasound imaging device includes a plurality of ultrasound transducers arranged in an array of rows and columns. Each of the transducers has a first electrode and a second electrode. The first electrodes of the transducers of a same row are interconnected and the second electrodes of the transducers of a same column are interconnected.

Changes in tissue stiffness have long been associated with disease. Systems and methods for determining the stiffness of tissues using ultrasonography may include a device for inducing a propagating shear wave in tissue and tracking the speed of propagation, which is directly related to tissue stiffness and density. The speed of a propagating shear wave may be detected by imaging a tissue at a high frame rate and detecting the propagating wave as a perturbance in successive image frames relative to a baseline image of the tissue in an undisturbed state. In some embodiments, sufficiently high frame rates may be achieved by using a ping-based ultrasound imaging technique in which unfocused omni-directional pings are transmitted (in an imaging plane or in a hemisphere) into a region of interest. Receiving echoes of the omnidirectional pings with multiple receive apertures allows for substantially improved lateral resolution.

Techniques, systems, and devices are disclosed for synthetic aperture ultrasound imaging using a beamformer that incorporates a model of the object. In some aspects, a system includes an array of transducers to transmit and/or receive acoustic signals at an object that forms a synthetic aperture of the system with the object, an object beamformer unit to (i) beamform the object coherently as a function of position, orientation, and/or geometry of the transducers with respect to a model of the object, and (ii) produce a beamformed output signal including spatial information about the object derived from beamforming the acoustic echoes; a data processing unit to process data and produce an image of the object based on a rendition of the position, the orientation, the geometry, and/or the surface properties of the object, relative to the coordinate system of the array, as determined by the data processing unit.

An ultrasound imaging system (1) comprises an ultrasound transducer array (100) comprising a plurality of ultrasound transducer tiles (101a-d), each of said tiles having an independently adjustable orientation such as to conform an ultrasound transmitting surface to a region of a body (50) including a foreign object such as a pacemaker, a stent, or an interventional tool (200). Using a known spatial arrangement of a plurality of features (201-204) of the foreign object (200), the respective ultrasound images generated by the ultrasound transducer tiles are registered in order to generate a composite image, in which the position and orientation of the foreign object in the individual images is superimposed. The position and orientation of an interventional tool may be determined for each image using object recognition algorithms or using acoustic feedback information provided by at least three ultrasound sensors (201-204) arranged in a known spatial arrangement on the interventional tool.

Estimation and imaging of linear and nonlinear propagation and scattering parameters in a material object where the material parameters for wave propagation and scattering has a nonlinear dependence on the wave field amplitude. The methods comprise transmitting at least two pulse complexes composed of co-propagating high frequency (HF) and low frequency (LF) pulses along at least one LF and HF transmit beam axis, where said HF pulse propagates close to the crest or trough of the LF pulse along at least one HF transmit beam, and where one of the amplitude and polarity of the LF pulse varies between at least two transmitted pulse complexes. At least one HF receive beam crosses the HF transmit beam at an angle >20 deg to provide at least two HF cross-beam receive signals from at least two transmitted pulse complexes with different LF pulses. The HF cross-beam receive signals are processed to estimate one or both of i) a nonlinear propagation delay (NPD), and ii) a nonlinear pulse form distortion (PFD) of the transmitted HF pulse for said cross-beam observation cell.

The invention is to provide an ultrasonic image with a clear tissue structure while reducing speckle noise of the ultrasonic image. An ultrasonic wave is transmitted from the transducer to the subject, and an echo generated in the subject is received. The first ultrasonic image and the second ultrasonic image are generated using a reception signal. The second ultrasonic image is an image smoother than the first ultrasonic image. The image processing unit calculates filter coefficients using pixel values of corresponding pixels of the first ultrasonic image and the second ultrasonic image, and generates an output image by processing one of the first ultrasonic image and the second ultrasonic image using the filter coefficients.

Systems and methods for network-based ultrasound imaging are provided, which can include a number of features. In some embodiments, an ultrasound imaging system images an object with three-dimensional unfocused pings and obtains digital sample sets from a plurality of receiver elements. A sub-set of the digital sample sets can be electronically transferred to a remote server, where the sub-set can be beamformed to produce a series of two-dimensional image frames. A video stream made up of the series of two-dimensional images frames can then be transferred from the remote server to a display device.

An ultrasound system is disclosed comprising an ultrasound transducer array (100) comprising a plurality of ultrasound transducer cells (130), each of said cell having an independently adjustable position and/or orientation such as to conform an ultrasound transmitting surface of the cell to a region of a body and a controller (140). The controller is configured to register the respective ultrasound transducer cells by simultaneously operating at least two ultrasound transducer cells in a transmit mode in which the cells transmit distinguishable ultrasound signals and operating the remaining ultrasound transducer cells in a receive mode. The controller extracts time-of-flight information of the respective ultrasound signals between transmitter and receiver and by systematically selecting different ultrasound transducer cells as transmitters, the controller collects sufficient time-of-flight information from which the respective position and/or relative orientation of the ultrasound transducer cells within the ultrasound transducer array may be derived. A method for operating the ultrasound system in this manner as well as a computer program product is also disclosed.