Patent Document ID: 9943289
Application ID: 13904200
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. An ultrasound imaging system, comprising: an ultrasound transducer array that receives sets of echo signals produced in response to an ultrasound signal traversing flowing structure in a portion of a tubular structure of an object or subject in an imaging field of view; an image processor that processes the sets of echo signals and generates a structure image indicative of the portion of the tubular structure; a color flow processor that processes the sets of echo signals and generates color flow images indicative of a flow of the flowing structure in the portion of the tubular structure, including a flow direction and a flow magnitude of the flowing structure in the portion of the tubular structure, wherein the color flow images include at least one of color noise artifact or color flash artifact; a color flow corrector processor that corrects the color flow images for the at least one of the color noise artifact or the color flash artifact, producing corrected color flow images, wherein the color flow corrector processor includes a temporal median filter that corrects the color flow images for the at least one of the color noise artifact or the color flash artifact and produces the corrected color flow images by: receiving a plurality of color flow images of the color flow images, including color flow images with the at least one of the color noise artifact or the color flash artifact, wherein the received plurality of color flow images correspond to a same phase point in a motion cycle of the object or subject but different motion cycles; and generating the corrected color flow images with the received plurality of color flow images by computing a value at a pixel location of the corrected color flow images as a median value of values of the pixel location across the plurality of color flow images; and a video processor that displays the structure image and the corrected color flow images superimposed over the structure image.