Patent ID: 8070684

Claim:
A method of determining heart valve regurgitation, the method comprising: transmitting ultrasonic signals towards a moving heart valve; receiving ultrasonic signals reflected from the moving heart valve and blood flowing through the heart valve; processing the received ultrasonic signals to obtain Doppler signals; processing received Doppler signals in accordance with received signal strength to differentiate between Doppler signals received from tissue of the moving heart valve from Doppler signals received from the blood flowing through the heart valve, and assigning color based upon signal strength to the Doppler signals from both the tissue of the moving heart valve and the blood flowing through the heart valve; processing the Doppler signals with assigned color from both the tissue of the moving heart valve and the blood flowing through the heart valve to obtain a velocity-time profile of the Doppler signals with different assigned colors for both the moving heart valve and the blood flowing through the heart valve; and determining heart valve regurgitation by estimating a peak reverse blood flow based upon the velocity-time profile of the Doppler signals with assigned color from the blood flowing through the heart valve at systole.