Non-invasive estimation of intravascular pressure changes using vector velocity ultrasound (US)

An apparatus, comprising:

• a velocity estimator that processes ultrasound image data acquired by an ultrasound imaging system and generates velocity vector fields based thereon;
• a temporal acceleration processor that processes the velocity vector fields and generates a temporal acceleration, wherein the temporal acceleration processor filters the velocity vector fields while determining the temporal acceleration by:
• decomposing the velocity vector fields into a series of sinusoids;
• discarding a sub-set of the sinusoids that do not satisfy predetermined energy criteria;
• differentiating the remaining sinusoids;
• and
• reconstructing the differentiated data back to the time domain;
• a spatial acceleration processor that processes the velocity vector fields and generates a spatial acceleration;
• a pressure change estimator that estimates pressure gradients for the ultrasound data based on a model and the temporal and spatial accelerations;
• and
• a display configured to display ultrasound image data and the pressure gradients estimates.

A non-transitory computer readable storage medium encoded with computer executable instructions which when executed by a processor of the computer causes the processor to:

• acquire ultrasound data of a vessel;
• determine a spatial acceleration based on velocity vector fields for the ultrasound data;
• transform the velocity vector fields to the frequency domain, producing a sum of sinusoids;
• differentiate a sub-set of the sinusoids satisfying a predetermined energy of interest, producing a sum of cosines;
• reconstruct the sum of cosines to determine a temporal acceleration;
• and
• determine a pressure change with the Navier-Stokes equation based on the spatial acceleration and the temporal acceleration;
• and
• display an ultrasound image of the vessel with indicia indicative of the pressure change superimposed thereover.