Patent ID: 11953593
Assignee: COVIDIEN LP
Field: Medical technology (Instruments)
Classification: CPC G  A | IPC A  G

Claim 0:
1. An ultrasound imaging method comprising:
for each of a plurality of steer angles including a reference steer angle, generating an ultrasound image of a target region;
computing a difference between each pixel coordinate of the ultrasound image generated for the reference steer angle and each corresponding pixel coordinate of the ultrasound images generated for the steer angles other than the reference steer angle;
generating a difference image based on the computed difference;
computing, for each pixel coordinate of each ultrasound image generated for the steer angles other than the reference steer angle, motion information of the target region based on the difference image;
for each ultrasound image generated for the steer angles other than the reference steer angle, generating a weighted ultrasound image by assigning a weight to each pixel coordinate of the ultrasound image;
for each weighted ultrasound image, excluding each pixel coordinate from the weighted ultrasound image whose motion information exceeds a predetermined threshold without discarding the weighted ultrasound image;
combining the weighted ultrasound images to generate and display an initial compounded ultrasound image of the target region; and
replacing a previous ultrasound image generated for a first steer angle of the plurality of steer angles with a subsequent ultrasound image generated corresponding to the first steer angle to compound and update the initial compounded ultrasound image such that a first latency for generating and displaying the initial compounded ultrasound image includes a plurality of beamforming periods and a second latency for generating and displaying another compounded ultrasound image subsequent to the initial compounded ultrasound image is reduced to one beamforming period.