An ultrasonic diagnostic imaging system is described which utilizes one or more transducer arrays affixed to the head of a patient to diagnose and treat stroke victims. The transducer headset produces a two or three dimensional image of the vasculature inside the cranium, preferably assisted by a microbubble contrast agent. A vascular flow map is produced by the system which may be diagnosed for signs of a blood clot. If a blood clot is detected, a therapeutic beam is transmitted while the contrast agent is present to break up the blood clot by the disruption of microbubbles. The headset may also be used in a monitoring application to detect the recurrence of blood clots in a stroke victim.

A method for imaging a flowing media within static regions includes obtaining a plurality of signals using the speckle properties of the flowing media. The plurality of signals are compared to one another such as by subtraction. The static regions are removed from the plurality of signals by the comparison. The remaining signals are combined (such as by summing) to produce an image of the flowing media.

An ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus according to an embodiment includes filter processing circuitry and generation circuitry. The filter processing circuitry performs a filter process of removing a still or minute-moving signal on reflected wave signals of an ultrasonic wave transmitted a plurality of times in the same scanning line. The generation circuitry generates reflected wave data through a phasing addition process using reflected wave signal of each channel after the filter process performed by the filter processing circuitry.

An ultrasound imaging system may automatically find and track a coronary artery in a 3D volume. The artery location may be considered fixed within each of the overlapping spans of time data used for spectral processing in some examples. Data from along the artery within the 3D volume may be coherently integrated, and average beam-to-flow angle may be compensated for automatically. Optionally, a live, 3D rendered graphic or color flow image of the 3D volume may be displayed while the spectrogram is displayed. Optionally, audio output reflecting the spectral data may be provided to a speaker.

An intraluminal sensing system is provided, which includes an intraluminal device. The intraluminal device includes a flexible elongate member that can be positioned within a body lumen of a patient, and an ultrasound sensor at a distal portion of the flexible elongate member and configured to emit an ultrasound pulse in a longitudinal direction and to receive ultrasound echoes from the pulse. The system also includes a processor circuit in communication with the ultrasound sensor. The processor circuit is configured to compute a velocity spectrum of particles moving within the body lumen based on the received ultrasound echoes and, based on the velocity spectrum, compute a skew index indicative of a position or alignment of the ultrasound sensor within the body lumen. The processor circuit is also configured to output an indication of the skew index.

The present invention is directed to an ultrasound imaging system and method for Doppler processing of data. The ultrasonic imaging system efficiently addresses the data computational and processing needs of Doppler processing. In a preferred embodiment, the ultrasound imaging system of the present invention includes a processing module; and memory operable coupled to the processing module, wherein the memory stores operational instructions that cause the processing module to map serial data to vector representation, calculate an auto-correlation function of the data, calculate a phase shift of the auto-correlation function to generate a monotonic function covering all values of the phase shift corresponding to a range of Doppler velocities and display the resultant images, for example, as color images.

An ultrasound imaging system which acquires short and/or undersampled radiofrequency ensembles for generating color Doppler images. The ultrasound imaging system processes the short and/or undersampled ensembles to simulate color Doppler images acquired from long radiofrequency ensembles. In some examples, the ultrasound imaging system includes one or more neural networks to process the ensembles.

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.

While 3D ultrasound imaging is becoming a powerful tool in medical field, the main drawback is the difficulty to image large 3D volume, mainly related to the dimensions of the 2D array of transducers. In order to not lose in spatial resolution, it is necessary to use an array of transducers, wherein the size of the transducers does not exceed the wavelength of the ultrasound wave. Such requirement leads to dimensions of array for imaging large 3D volume which are not reachable or at too high cost with the current technology. The present disclosure overcomes the above technology limitation by using greater transducers, and where each transducer has a reception surface with a curved shape or is fitted with an acoustic lens. Such configuration of transducers leads to 2D array of transducers suitable for imaging large 3D volume, as a brain or a heart, with high resolution and high sensitivity.

For adaptive clutter filtering in color imaging by an ultrasound scanner, artificial intelligence discriminates between types of signals and their corresponding locations. This discrimination may be based on scan data from the beamformer and/or estimates of flow or motion. The wall filter adapts or is programmed to use different frequency response location-by-location based on the discrimination.