A method of power Doppler imaging may include receiving a plurality of temporally sequential frames of wall-filtered power Doppler signals, wherein the plurality of temporally sequential frames includes at least one previously adjusted output frame. The method may further include adjusting at least one of the plurality of temporally sequential frames to produce an adjusted output frame and generating a power Doppler image based, at least in part, on the adjusted output frame. The adjusting may involve filtering the plurality of temporally sequential frames to suppress the high spatial frequency and high temporal frequency content to produce the adjusted output frame.

An ultrasound imaging system includes a transducer array (102) with a plurality of transducer elements (106) configured to transmit an ultrasound signal, receive echo signals produced in response to the ultrasound signal interacting with stationary structure and flowing structure, and generate electrical signals indicative of the echo signals. The system further includes a beamformer (112) configured to process the electrical signals and generate sequences, in time, of beamformed data. The system further includes a filter (118) configured to process the beamformed data, and remove or replace a set of frequency components based on a threshold, producing corrected beamformed data. The system further includes a flow processor (120) configured to estimate a velocity of flowing structure from the corrected beamformed data. The system further includes a rendering engine (224) configured to display the flow velocity estimate on a display (124).

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.

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 diagnostic imaging system is used to measure volume flow. An ultrasound probe operating in the biplane mode is used to acquire a vessel in a long axis view in a first Doppler image, and simultaneously in a transverse view in a second Doppler image. Volume flow is calculated from the transverse view of the vessel. The plane of the second image is aligned with the Doppler angle of the first image so that angle correction determined for the first image can be used for angle correction in the volume flow calculation.

An ultrasonic diagnostic device according to an embodiment includes a collecting unit and processing circuitry. The collecting unit performs ultrasonic scanning with respect to a subject and collects reflected-wave data. The processing circuitry performs short-time Fourier transform in the depth direction with respect to the reflected-wave data; applies a nonlinear adaptive MTI filter on a frequency-by-frequency basis with respect to the result of the short-time Fourier transform; and performs inverse short-time Fourier transform in the depth direction with respect to the output of the nonlinear adaptive MTI filter. Then, the processing circuitry estimates blood flow information from the result of the inverse short-time Fourier transform.

An ultrasound diagnostic apparatus generates Doppler waveform images whose visibility is improved appropriately in accordance with changes in measurement conditions. The ultrasound diagnostic apparatus includes a frequency-analyzing unit that generates frequency spectrum data on Doppler shift frequency components of ultrasonic waves that are received after being transmitted towards a subject and reflected in the subject, and a line data generating unit for generating line data, wherein arrays of multiple pixels are stipulated according to the corresponding frequencies and each pixel value represents the magnitude of the Doppler shift frequency component, based on the frequency spectrum data. The ultrasound diagnostic apparatus determines whether or not each pixel of line data at a previously appointed time point is a noise pixel, and the values of pixels that are determined to be noise pixels are adjusted by multiplying the pixel value with a weighting factor (w) of 0 to less than 1.

A system and method for providing clutter suppression in vessels depicted in B-mode ultrasound images is provided. The method includes acquiring series of B-mode frames and periodically acquiring a flow image frame between each series of B-mode frames. The method includes segmenting the flow image frame and a subsequent B-mode frame in a series of B-mode frames acquired immediately after the flow image frame to extract a vessel lumen and analyzing a spatial correlation between the vessel lumen region in the flow image frame and the subsequent B-mode frame. The method includes applying clutter filtering to pixels in the vessel lumen region of the subsequent B-mode frame based on flow characteristics of corresponding pixels in the flow image frame when the spatial correlation between the vessel lumen region in the flow image frame and the subsequent B-mode frame exceeds a threshold. The method includes presenting the clutter suppressed B-mode frame.

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.

An ultrasound system performs duplex colorflow and spectral Doppler imaging, with the spectral Doppler interrogation performed at a sample volume location shown on the colorflow image. The colorflow image is displayed in a color box overlaid on a co-registered B mode image. A color box position and steering angle processor analyzes the spatial Doppler data and automatically sets the color box angle and location over a blood vessel for optimal Doppler sensitivity and accuracy. The processor may also automatically set the flow angle correction cursor in alignment with the direction of flow. In a preferred embodiment these optimization adjustments are made automatically and continuously as a user pauses at points for Doppler measurements along a length of the blood vessel.