Diffraction source compensation in medical diagnostic ultrasound viscoelastic imaging
AssigneeSiemens Medical Solutions USA, Inc.
InventorsYassin Labyed, Liexiang Fan
Life of this patent
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Abstract
In viscoelastic imaging with ultrasound, the shear wave speed or other viscoelastic parameter is measured by tracking at the ARFI focal or other high-intensity location relative to the ARFI transmission. Rather than tracking the shear wave, the tissue response to ARFI is measured. A profile of displacements over time or a spectrum thereof is measured at the location. By finding a scale of the profile resulting in sufficient correlation with a calibration profile, the shear wave speed or other viscoelastic parameter may be estimated.
Claims14
A method for viscoelastic imaging with a medical diagnostic ultrasound scanner, the method comprising:
- transmitting from a transducer an acoustic radiation force impulse by the ultrasound scanner as a transmit beam with a beam profile along a scan line;
- measuring, by a receive beamformer of the ultrasound scanner, displacements as a function of time within the beam profile along the scan line, at least some of the displacements responsive to the acoustic radiation force impulse;
- generating, by an image processor, a first profile from the displacements for a first location;
- calculating, by the image processor, a scale weighting of the first profile relative to a reference profile;
- estimating, by the image processor, a viscoelastic characteristic based on the scale weighting;
- and
- generating on a display an image of the viscoelastic characteristic.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.