Doppler Imaging

About

Summary   Stanford researchers have proposed a fast way to produce high quality ultrasound power Doppler images based on the coherence properties of ultrasound. This method produces images with uniform resolution and improves the depth-of-field of the coherent imaging process, while providing ample suppression of noise including thermal noise and reverberation clutter. While coherence methods such as short-lag spatial coherence (SLSC) imaging and coherent flow power Doppler (CFPD) imaging methods produce significant thermal noise and reverberation clutter reduction, they are computationally intensive and require software beamformers with access to the channel data. This invention is capable of being implemented on commercial scanners and doesn't require access to channel data. Furthermore, the proposed method uses a significantly less data compared to traditional SLSC and CFPD, vastly reducing the computational load and improving the frame rate of the CFPD imaging process. In addition, due to the higher sensitivity of the CFPD method, significantly higher frame rates can be achieved over the conventional power Doppler method. In comparison with conventional power Doppler imaging, the proposed method can produce Doppler images with 15- to 30-dB SNR improvement and is able to detect flow with velocities approximately 50% slower than conventional power Doppler or improve frame rate by a factor of 3 with comparable image quality. This invention can be particularly useful for ultrasound flow imaging of slow flow and small vessels, deep vasculature tissue of the difficult-to-image patient populations (e.g. overweight/obese patients).