Shear Wave Estimation from Analytic Data
AssigneeSiemens Medical Solutions USA, Inc.
InventorLiexiang Fan
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Shear wave characteristics are estimated from analytic data. Measures of displacement are converted into complex representations. The magnitude and/or phase components of the complex representation may be used for estimating various characteristics, such as velocity, center frequency, attenuation, shear modulus, or shear viscosity. The zero-phase of the phase component represents an occurrence of the shear wave at that location.
Claims20
A method for shear wave estimation from analytic data, the method comprising:
- transmitting an acoustic radiation force excitation into a patient;
- measuring, with ultrasound, displacements at locations of tissue within a patient in response to a shear wave resulting from the acoustic radiation force excitation;
- constructing, by a processor, analytic data from the displacements;
- estimating a characteristic of the shear wave from the analytic data;
- and
- displaying an image that is a function of the characteristic.
In a non-transitory computer readable storage medium having stored therein data representing instructions executable by a programmed processor for shear wave estimation from analytic data, the storage medium comprising instructions for:
- measuring, with ultrasound, real displacement data at locations of tissue within a patient in response to a shear wave resulting from an acoustic radiation force excitation;
- constructing analytic displacement data from the real displacement data;
- computing phases of the complex displacement data for each of the locations;
- estimating a shear wave velocity from zero crossings of the phases;
- and
- generating an image indicating the shear wave velocity.
In a non-transitory computer readable storage medium having stored therein data representing instructions executable by a programmed processor for shear wave estimation from analytic data, the storage medium comprising instructions for:
- measuring, with ultrasound, real displacement data at locations of tissue within a patient in response to a shear wave resulting from an acoustic radiation force excitation;
- constructing analytic displacement data from the real displacement data;
- filtering the analytic displacement data at different frequencies;
- calculating shear velocities as a function of the frequencies;
- and
- estimating shear modulus, viscosity, or shear modulus and viscosity from the shear velocities as a function of the frequencies.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.