Patent ID: 8771190

Claim:
A method for suppressing ultrasound clutter noise comprising: generating a B-mode image based on first ultrasound signals returned from blood vessels; generating Doppler signals based on second ultrasound signals returned from the blood vessels; determining a normalized amplitude a, a normalized power a 2 and a normalized power raised to a power a b(i) , where the i th component b(i) is a real number, based on the Doppler signals; multiplying the normalized amplitude a, normalized power a 2 and normalized power raised to a power a b(i) , with a corresponding weight d 1 , d 2 and d i , where d 1 , d 2 and the i th component d i are real numbers; summing together the weighted normalized amplitude d 1 a, normalized power d 2 a 2 and normalized power raised to a power d i a b(i) to determine a combined flow component parameter d 1 ⁢ a + d 2 ⁢ a 2 + ∑ i ⁢ d i ⁢ a b ⁡ ( i ) generating a gain control signal α based on the combined flow component parameter; and applying a gain to the B-mode image based on the gain control signal α to generate a second B-mode image, wherein the second B-mode image exhibits less clutter noise than the first B-mode image.