Patent ID: 6245016
Filing Date: 2001-06-12
Classification: A61B,G01S

Abstract:
A system for imaging flow of ultrasound scatterers, comprising:an ultrasound transducer array for transmitting a multiplicity of ultrasound beams in a scan plane and, for each beam, detecting reflected ultrasound echoes;a beamformer coupled to said ultrasound transducer array for acquiring a respective A-line comprising a sequence of reflection data samples for each ultrasound beam;means for computing a greatest-likelihood tissue type sequence estimate representing discrete states for each A-line;means for computing a reflection sequence estimate for each A-line as a function of a respective one of the greatest-likelihood tissue type sequence estimates;an adaptive variance estimator for computing a respective variance sequence estimate for each A-line from a respective one of said reflection sequence estimates to produce respective deconvolved A-lines; andmeans for displaying said deconvolved A-lines.