Patent ID: 6139500
Filing Date: 2000-10-31
Classification: A61B,G01S,Y10S

Abstract:
A method for medical ultrasound imaging of a volume of interest in a patient having a cardiac cycle, comprising the steps of:scanning an ultrasound beam in a fast scan direction;scanning the ultrasound beam in a slow scan direction concurrently with scanning in the fast scan direction, by performing multiple scans across the entire volume of interest during multiple cardiac cycles;during scanning of the ultrasound beam, acquiring ultrasound data samples, representative of two-dimensional slices of the volume of interest in the patient, at different points in the slow scan direction and at different times in the patient's cardiac cycle, by acquiring a subset of a desired set of data samples during each of the multiple scans across the entire volume of interest;controlling scanning in the slow scan direction relative to the patient's cardiac cycle so that the acquired data samples have a desired spatial distribution over the volume of interest and a desired temporal distribution over the patient's cardiac cycle; andconverting the acquired data samples to three-dimensional image data sets which represent the volume of interest at different times in the patient's cardiac cycle.