Back to results
US 2017/0281129 A1Published application
Coherence-based Beamforming for Improved Microbubble Detection in Contrast Enhanced Ultrasound
AssigneeThe Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
InventorsJeremy Joseph Dahl, Dongwoon Hyun, Juergen K. Willmann
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Ultrasonic imaging is performed by constructing spatial coherence images of a target having microbubbles in it. The basis for this approach is the observation that the spatial coherence of microbubbles differs from the spatial coherence of tissue and the spatial coherence of image noise. Therefore, imaging based on spatial coherence provides a way to suppress noise signals and tissue signals relative to the microbubble signals.
Claims13
A method for ultrasound medical imaging, the method comprising:
- providing a contrast agent to a target being imaged, wherein the contrast agent includes microbubbles;
- providing incident acoustic radiation to the target with an ultrasound transducer array, wherein the target provides an acoustic signal responsive to the incident acoustic radiation;
- receiving the acoustic signal with the ultrasound transducer array;
- providing an ultrasound image of the target by applying a beamforming method to the acoustic signal;
- wherein the beamforming method includes:
- i) estimating a spatial coherence function of the target;
- ii) integrating the spatial coherence function over a predetermined integration window.
4 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.