Method and system for flow processing on channel data for application of nonlinear beamforming

An ultrasound system comprising:

• a plurality of transducer elements, wherein each of the plurality of transducer elements is operable to:
• transmit a sequence of transmit beams in a direction into a region of interest, and
• receive a sequence of echo signals, each from a plurality of depths in the region of interest, the sequence of echo signals corresponding to the sequence of transmit beams;
• at least one receive beamformer operable to:
• delay clutter filtered signals to provide delay aligned clutter filtered signals,
• calculate a coherency of the delay aligned clutter filtered signals, and
• nonlinearly combine the delay aligned clutter filter signals and the coherency of the delay aligned clutter filtered signals from one or more of the plurality of depths and across each of the plurality of transducer elements to generate at least one beamformed signal for each received set of echo signals in the sequence of echo signals from the one or more of the plurality of depths;
• at least one processor configured to:
• generate the clutter filtered signals corresponding to each echo signal of the sequence of echo signals from each of the plurality of depths and for each of the plurality of transducer elements, and
• calculate a measurement for each of the one or more depths based on the at least one beamformed signal for each received set of echo signals in the sequence of echo signals from the one or more of the plurality of depths;
• and
• a display system configured to present the measurement for each of the one or more of the plurality of depths.

A non-transitory computer readable medium having stored thereon, a computer program having at least one code section, the at least one code section being executable by a machine for causing an ultrasound system to perform steps comprising:

• generating a clutter filtered signal corresponding to each echo signal of a sequence of echo signals from a plurality of depths in a region of interest and for each of a plurality of transducer elements, wherein the sequence of echo signals is received by each of the plurality of transducer elements in response to a sequence of transmit beams transmitted by each of the plurality of transducer elements in a direction into the region of interest;
• delaying the clutter filtered signals to provide delay aligned clutter filtered signals;
• calculating a coherency of the delay aligned clutter filtered signals;
• nonlinearly combining the delay aligned clutter filtered signals and the coherency of the delay aligned clutter filtered signals from one or more of the plurality of depths and across each of the plurality of transducer elements to generate at least one beamformed signal for each received set of echo signals in the sequence of echo signals from the one or more of the plurality of depths;
• calculating a measurement for each of the one or more of the plurality of depths based on the at least one beamformed signal for each received set of echo signals in the sequence of echo signals from the one or more of the plurality of depths;
• and
• presenting the measurement for each of the one or more of the plurality of depths at a display system.