Ultrasound ARFI Displacement Imaging Using an Adaptive Time Instance
AssigneeSiemens Medical Solutions USA, Inc.
InventorsSeungsoo Kim, Liexiang Fan, Nikolas M. Ivancevich, David P. Duncan
Life of this patent
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Abstract
In ARFI imaging, a cost function is used to identify a time of displacement that best or sufficiently indicates the desired information. For example, the displacements associated with a combination of contrast and signal-to-noise ratio are identified. The time at which the desired displacements occur may be other than the time of the maximum. Since the time is common to displacements for one or more scan lines, the displacement image may be assembled line-by-line or by groups of lines.
Claims20
A method for acoustic radiation force impulse (ARFI) imaging, the method comprising:
- measuring, with an ultrasound system, displacements over different times at a plurality of locations within a patient in response to an impulse excitation;
- determining contrasts for the displacements at each of the times;
- determining signal-to-noise ratios for the displacements at each of the times;
- selecting a first one of the times as a function of the contrasts and the signal-to-noise ratios;
- and
- generating an ARFI image with the displacements of the selected first time.
In a non-transitory computer readable storage medium having stored therein data representing instructions executable by a programmed processor for acoustic radiation force impulse (ARFI) imaging, the storage medium comprising instructions for:
- determining displacements at multiple times;
- calculating quality levels of the displacements for the times with a cost function;
- identifying one of the times based on the quality levels;
- and
- outputting an image with display values responsive to the displacements of the one time.
A system for acoustic radiation force impulse (ARFI) imaging, the system comprising:
- a transducer configured to transmit a first acoustic impulse excitation into a patient, to scan with ultrasound a first line of the patient, to transmit a second acoustic impulse excitation into the patient, and to scan with ultrasound a second line of the patient;
- a receive beamformer configured to generate data representing the first and second lines at different times relative to the first and second acoustic impulse excitations, respectively, the data generated from the scans with ultrasound;
- a processor configured to estimate tissue displacement in the first and second lines induced by the first and second acoustic impulse excitations at each of the different times and configured to select a first of the different times for the tissue displacements in the first line and to select a second of the different times for the tissue displacements in the second line, the first time a different amount of time after the first acoustic impulse excitation than the second time after the second acoustic impulse excitation;
- and
- a display configured to display an image representing the displacements of the first time for the first line and of the second time for the second line.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.