Patent · US Expired

Method and apparatus for locking sample volume onto moving vessel in pulsed doppler ultrasound imaging

US6390984B1 · kind B1 · utility

19Cited by
6References
30Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventors

Key dates

Filing dateSep 14, 2000
Grant dateMay 21, 2002
Priority date
Expiry dateJan 9, 2021

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC G)Physics
  • CPC primaryG01S15/8986
  • WIPO fieldMedical technology
  • WIPO sectorInstruments

Abstract

A method and an apparatus for automatically maintaining the Doppler sample gate position at a preselected vessel position in B-mode or color flow images during tissue or probe motion. The sample gate is locked onto the selected vessel automatically when the vessel position has changed. Optionally, the vessel slope cursor is automatically updated when the vessel position has changed. The method employs pattern matching of images from successive frames to determine how much a vessel in the image frame has been translated and rotated from one frame to the next. Preferably, either a cross-correlation method is applied to the imaging data in the spatial domain to determine the relative object translation and/or rotation between image frames, or a matched filtering method is applied to the imaging data in the frequency (i.e., Fourier) domain to determine the relative object translation and/or rotation between image frames.

Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.