Doppler ultrasound simulator

US6210168A · kind A · utility

Assignee

• Medsim Ltd. · IL

Inventors

• Dror Aiger · Ramat Gan, IL
• Nimrod Goor · Sunrise, US
• Mark A. Bergman · Wilmington, US

Key dates

• Filing date: Mar 16, 1998
• Grant date: Apr 3, 2001
• Expiry date: Mar 16, 2018

Classification

• Technology area (CPC G): Physics
• CPC primary: G01S7/52066
• WIPO field: Measurement
• WIPO sector: Instruments

Abstract

A method and system for simulating, on a B-mode ultrasound simulator, a D-mode and C-mode Doppler ultrasound examination. Velocity and sound data describing blood flow at selected locations within blood vessels of a patient are gathered during an actual Doppler ultrasound examination. The gathered data are processed off-line to generate sets of flow velocity and sound values which describe blood flow at selected locations in a virtual B-mode frame buffer, and are stored in memory. Doppler simulation at a designated location on a the B-mode image generated from the virtual frame buffer is achieved by performing bilinear interpolation, at the time of simulation, from the data stored in memory, so as to determine flow velocity and sound values for all designated virtual frame buffer voxels. The interpolated flow velocity values are depicted as either a gray scale Doppler spectral waveform or a color scale flow map on the screen of the B-mode ultrasound simulator, and the sound values are depicted as an audible signal simulating a Doppler sound waveform.