Patent ID: 8157735

Claim:
An ultrasound system for providing ultrasound images in a duplex mode, comprising: a transmission/reception unit for alternately transmitting a first ultrasound beam and a second ultrasound beam to a target object, wherein the first and second ultrasound beams are transmitted for first and second time durations, respectively; and an image processing unit for forming a first diagnostic mode image based on echoes of the first ultrasound beam and a second diagnostic mode image containing a gap corresponding to the first time duration based on echoes of the second ultrasound beam, the image processing unit being configured to perform gap filling based on edge points of the second diagnostic mode image to form a second diagnostic mode image with the gap removed, wherein the second diagnostic mode image includes a Doppler mode (D-mode) image, and wherein the image processing unit includes: a D-mode image forming unit for forming the D-mode image; an edge point extracting unit for extracting the edge points from the D-mode image; an edge point estimating unit for computing a polynomial curve of the extracted edge points to estimate edge points within the gap; and a gap filling unit for performing the gap filling for the gap based on the estimated edge points and Doppler spectra neighboring to the gap in the D-mode image.