An ultrasonic imaging system produces more diagnostic cardiac images of the left ventricle by plotting the longitudinal medial axis of the chamber between the apex and mitral valve plane as a curved line evenly spaced between the opposite walls of the myocardium. Transverse image planes are positioned orthogonal to the curved medial axis with control points positioned in the short axis view on lines evenly spaced around and emanating from the medial axis. If the short axis view is of an oval shaped chamber the transverse image is stretched to give the heart a more rounded appearance resulting in better positioning of editing control points.

Aspects of the technology described herein related to monitoring fetal heartbeat and uterine contraction signals. An ultrasound system may be configured to sweep a volume to collect ultrasound data, detect a fetal heartbeat and/or uterine contraction signal in the ultrasound data, and automatically steer an ultrasound beam to monitor the fetal heartbeat and/or uterine contraction signal. The ultrasound system may be further configured to determine a location where the fetal heartbeat and/or uterine contraction signal is detectable or detectable at a highest quality. The ultrasound system may include a wearable ultrasound device, such as an ultrasound patch coupled to a subject. The wearable ultrasound device may have a two-dimensional array of ultrasonic transducers capable of steering ultrasound beams in three dimensions.

An ultrasound diagnostic apparatus (1) includes a frame thinning-out unit (8), a urinary bladder extraction unit (9), a feature quantity calculation unit (10), a candidate frame extraction unit (11), and a urine volume measurement unit (13). The frame thinning-out unit thins out ultrasound images of some frames from ultrasound images of a first frame group to form a second frame group of ultrasound images, the second frame group being constituted by a smaller number of frames than the first frame group of ultrasound images. The urinary bladder extraction unit extracts a urinary bladder region from each ultrasound image. The feature quantity calculation unit calculates a feature quantity of the urinary bladder region. The candidate frame extraction unit extracts, based on the feature quantity, an ultrasound image of at least one candidate frame from the ultrasound images of the second frame group. The urine volume measurement unit analyzes an ultrasound image of a measurement frame selected from the ultrasound image of the at least one candidate frame to measure a urine volume.

A system useful for performing ultrasound elastography of organs such as the liver allows efficient and robust data acquisition. The system may be applied to perform real-time, noninvasive ultrasound imaging of the liver in humans. Steady-state, shear wave absolute elastography is used to measure the Young's modulus of the liver tissue. This method involves the use of an external exciter or vibrator to shake the tissue and generate a shear wave. Accurate placement of an ultrasound transducer facilitates measurement of the tissue motion due to the shear wave. The stiffness of tissues in the region being imaged may be computed from the measured tissue motions. The following innovations address both vibrator and transducer placement, as well as some specific methods to ensure adequate wave propagation, in order to obtain accurate and consistent measurements.

For robust view classification and measurement estimation in sequential ultrasound imaging, the classification and/or measurements for a given image or sequence of images are gated. To prevent oscillation in results, the gating provides consistent output.

Systems and methods for super-resolution ultrasound imaging of microvessels in a subject are described. Ultrasound data are acquired from a region-of-interest in a subject who has been administered a microbubble contrast agent. The ultrasound data are acquired while the microbubbles are moving through, or otherwise present in, the region-of-interest. The region-of-interest may include, for instance, microvessels or other microvascuiature in the subject. By isolating, localizing, tracking, and accumulating the microbubbles in the ultrasound data, super-resolution images of the microvessels can be generated.

The invention relates to a method for generating a synthetic elastography image (18), the method comprising the steps of (a) receiving a B-mode ultrasound image (5) of a region of interest; (b) generating a synthetic elastography image (18) of the region of interest by applying a trained artificial neural network (16) to the B-mode ultrasound image (5). The invention also relates to a method for training an artificial neural network (16)5 useful in generating synthetic elastography images, and a related computer program and system.

A catheter having a lumen includes a tube, a sensor unit disposed at a distal end of the tube and capable of transmitting and receiving ultrasound, and an irradiation unit disposed at the distal end of the tube and capable of emitting the ultrasound toward a guide wire which passes through the lumen and protrudes from the distal end of the tube. The shape of the biological tissue can be observed by transmitting the ultrasound from the sensor units toward the biological tissue and receiving the reflection wave reflected by the biological tissue at the sensor units. Irradiating the guide wire with the ultrasound transmitted from the irradiation unit causes the guide wire to vibrate. The vibration of the guide wire can facilitate the passage through an occlusion site of the biological tissue.

The invention provides an ultrasound processing unit. A controller (18) of the unit is adapted to receive ultrasound data of an anatomical region, for example of the heart. The controller processes the ultrasound data over a period of time to monitor and detect whether alignment of a particular anatomical feature (34) represented in the data relative to a field of view (36) of the transducer unit is changing over time. In the event that the alignment is changing, the controller generates an output signal for communicating this to a user, allowing a user to be alerted at an early stage to likelihood of misalignment and loss of imaging or measurement capability.

An ultrasound image system is provided. The ultrasound image system includes an ultrasound probe and a processing circuit. The ultrasound probe includes a substrate, a first transducer array and a second transducer array. The first transducer array is fixed disposed on the substrate and configured to receive a first ultrasound signal The second transducer array is fixed disposed on the substrate and configured to receive a second ultrasound signal. Each of the first transducer array and the second transducer array includes a plurality of ultrasound transducer elements arranged along a first direction. The ultrasound transducer elements of the first transducer array are interleaved with the ultrasound transducer elements of the second transducer array. The processing circuit is coupled to the first transducer array and the second transducer array and is configured to generate an ultrasound image signal according to the first ultrasound signal and the second ultrasound signal.