Method and apparatus for reducing ultrasound image shadowing and speckle
US5566674A · kind A · utility
Assignee
Inventor
Key dates
| Filing date | Jun 30, 1995 |
| Grant date | Oct 22, 1996 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Jun 30, 2015 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC G)Physics
- CPC primaryG01S15/8995
- WIPO fieldMeasurement
- WIPO sectorInstruments
Abstract
A method and apparatus is provided for generating a spatially compounded ultrasonic image using an image registration method (IR-SC). In the image registration method, a current image frame is correlated with a previously generated IR-SC image in order to derive the transducer motion information for IR-SC image generation. Specifically, the current image frame is divided into several smaller sub-frame regions, and a very fast and robust image motion detection algorithm is utilized to measure the sub-frame motion. This algorithm uses a fast adaptive coarse/fine minimum-sum-absolute-difference (MSAD) search strategy to compute an initial estimation of the local motion vectors. The initial estimation is combined with two measurement parameters by use of a fuzzy logic technique to derive a final estimation of the local motion vectors. The final local motion vectors are applied to a least-squares (L-S) process in order to estimate global image motion. Based on the global image motion information, the current image frame is transformed geometrically to coincide with the previously compounded IR-SC image frame. Once transformed, the current image frame is compounded with the previously co…
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.