Determining heart rate based on a sequence of ultrasound images

A method in a computing system, comprising:

• receiving a sequence of ultrasound images of a person;
• for each ultrasound image of at least a portion of the ultrasound images of the sequence:
• accessing a multivalued representation of the ultrasound image;
• pooling values of the multivalued representation of the ultrasound image to obtain a single-value representation of the ultrasound image;
• and
• adding the obtained single-value representation of the ultrasound image to a time-ordered buffer window of single-value representations of ultrasound images of the sequence from earlier times.

One or more computer memory units collectively having contents configured to cause a computing system to perform a method, the method comprising:

• receiving a sequence of ultrasound images of a person;
• for each ultrasound image of at least a portion of the ultrasound images of the sequence:
• accessing a multivalued representation of the ultrasound image;
• pooling values of the multivalued representation of the ultrasound image to obtain a single-value representation of the ultrasound image;
• and
• adding the obtained single-value representation of the ultrasound image to a time-ordered buffer window of single-value representation of ultrasound images of the sequence from earlier times.

A method in a computing system, comprising:

• accessing an M-mode ultrasound image representing ultrasound data received for a patient during a distinguished period of time;
• for each of a plurality of vertical lines of the image corresponding to a different time during the distinguished period, each vertical line comprising a first number of values:
• compressing the vertical line to transform the vertical line into a second number of values that is smaller than the first number of values;
• pooling the second number of values into a single-value representation of the vertical line;
• and
• adding the obtained single-value representation of the vertical line to a time-ordered buffer window of single-value representation representations of vertical line of the image from earlier times.

A method in a computing system, comprising:

• accessing ultrasound data collected from a person at each of a plurality of times during a distinguished period of time;
• for each of the plurality of times:
• compressing the ultrasound data collected from the person to obtain a single-value representation;
• adding the obtained single-value representation to a buffer;
• and
• processing the buffer contents to determine a heart rate.

One or more computer memory units collectively having contents configured to cause a computing system to perform a method, the method comprising:

• accessing an M-mode ultrasound image representing ultrasound data received for a patient during a distinguished period of time;
• for each of a plurality of vertical lines of the image corresponding to a different time during the distinguished period, each vertical line comprising a first number of values:
• compressing the vertical line to transform the vertical line into a second number of values that is smaller than the first number of values;
• pooling the second number of values into a single-value representation of the vertical line;
• and
• adding the obtained single-value representation of the vertical line to a time-ordered buffer window of single-value representation representations of vertical line of the image from earlier times.