An ultrasound diagnostic apparatus including a hardware processor that: calculates a plurality of eigenvectors by performing principal component analysis on a time-series reflection wave data group; calculates a principal frequency component of a time direction represented by the plurality of eigenvectors; determines a reduction rate of each of the plurality of eigenvectors on a basis of the principal frequency component of each of the plurality of eigenvectors and a clutter component reduction condition that defines a reference frequency for reduction of a clutter component; calculates a filter coefficient for reduction of the clutter component on a basis of the plurality of eigenvectors, and the reduction rate corresponding to each of the plurality of eigenvectors; and generates blood flow image data by applying the filter coefficient to the time-series reflection wave data group.

A method includes emitting an ultrasound beam from an array of ultrasound transducers in a catheter placed in a blood pool in an organ. Echo signals reflected in response to the ultrasound beam are received in the array. Distinction is made in the echo signals between (i) first spectral signal components having Doppler shifts characteristic of blood and (ii) second spectral signal components having Doppler shifts characteristic of tissue of the organ. The first spectral signal components are suppressed relative to the second spectral signal components in the echo signals. An ultrasound image of at least a portion of the organ is reconstructed from the echo signals having the suppressed first spectral signal components. The reconstructed image is displayed to a user.

An apparatus (20) for imaging includes an input interface (54) and a processor (50). The input interface receives a sequence of input images of a target. Each input image includes a grid of pixels representing reflections of a transmitted signal from reflectors or scatterers in the target. A resolution of the input images is degraded by a measurement process of capturing the input images in the sequence. The processor derives, from the sequence of input images, an aggregated image in which each pixel comprises a statistical moment calculated over corresponding pixels of the input images, and converts the aggregated image into a super-resolution image of the target, having a higher resolution than the input images, by applying to the aggregated image a recovery function, which outputs the super-resolution image as a solution to the recovery function, provided that the reflectors or scatterers are sparse or compressible in a predefined transform domain.

Systems and methods for enhancing spatial specificity and increasing effective image acquisition speed by performing flow processing on channel data for application of nonlinear beamforming are provided. The method includes generating clutter filtered signals, delaying the clutter filtered signals to provide delay aligned clutter filtered signals, calculating coherency of the delay aligned clutter filtered signals, and nonlinearly combining the delay aligned clutter filtered signals and the coherency of the delay aligned clutter filtered signals across each transducer element at one or more depths to generate at least one beamformed signal for each received set of echo signals in a sequence of echo signals at the one or more depths. The method includes calculating and presenting a measurement for the one or more depths based on the at least one beamformed signal for each received set of echo signals in the sequence of echo signals at the one or more depths.

The ultrasound imaging apparatus provided to quantify the degree of flash artifacts based on an ultrasound echo signal, and to notify a user of an image section with a severe flash artifact includes: a probe configured to irradiate an ultrasound signal to an object and receive an ultrasound echo signal reflected from the object; an image processor configured to obtain a color Doppler signal from which a clutter signal has been completely or partially removed by filtering the ultrasound echo signal, obtain a plurality of consecutive Doppler image frames based on the color Doppler signal and generate a Doppler image based on the plurality of consecutive Doppler image frames; a display configured to output the Doppler image; and a controller configured to calculate a flash artifact score of each of the plurality of consecutive Doppler image frames based on the ultrasound echo signal, generate timeline corresponding to the plurality of consecutive Doppler image frames and control the display so that the flash artifact score of each of the plurality of consecutive Doppler image frames appear on the timeline.

An ultrasound system and a clutter filtering method thereof are provided. The clutter filtering method includes: transmitting an ultrasound signal to an object; receiving a reflection signal reflected from the object; performing a singular value decomposition (SVD) on a plurality of doppler signals constituting the reflection signal; dividing a representation of the object into a plurality of regions according to a result of performing the SVD; determining cutoff frequencies of the plurality of regions according to different methods; and performing clutter filtering on the plurality of regions by using the determined cutoff frequencies.

Provided are a method of displaying a Doppler image and an ultrasound diagnosis apparatus for performing the method. The method includes: obtaining a first Doppler signal where clutter filtering corresponding to each of a plurality of pixels is not performed and a second Doppler signal where clutter filtering corresponding to each of the plurality of pixels is performed; determining a first motion score indicating a degree of flash artifact occurrence by using velocity information of the first Doppler signal; determining a first weight for suppressing flash artifacts of each pixel based on the first motion score and a velocity difference value between the first Doppler signal and the second Doppler signal; generating a first Doppler image of the object by applying the first weight to the second Doppler signal of each pixel; and displaying the first Doppler image of the object.

An ultrasonic imaging system acquires frames of echo data at a high acquisition frame rate using a single mode of acquisition. The echo data is used by three image processors to produce an anatomical image, a mechanical function image, and a hemodynamic image from the same echo data. A display displays an anatomical image, a mechanical function image, and a hemodynamic image simultaneously.

The present invention aims at improving the Doppler imaging of a biological sample comprising blood. For this, it is proposed a method for imaging a biological sample (10), the sample (10) comprising blood (14) comprising diffusors and solid tissue (16), the method comprising obtaining observation, each observation being characterized by a different point spread function associating a signal to each location of the region of interest, the signal comprising a first contribution representative of the diffusors of blood vessels within the location, a second contribution representative of the tissue diffusors and a third contribution representative of blood signal associated to blood diffusors outside of the location, and estimating, for each location, the blood flow by using a statistical analysis.

An ultrasonic diagnostic imaging for analyzing shear wave characteristics utilizes a background motion compensation subsystem which acts as a spatial filter of pulse-to-pulse autocorrelation phases over the ROI of tracking pulse vectors to compensate for background motion. The subsystem is configured to compute the sum of all lag-1 autocorrelations of tracking line ensemble data over the tracking ROI, for each PRI. The inventive technique does not significantly reduce sensitivity to shear waves, because the shear wave is spatially smaller than the ROI.