Ultrasonic imaging apparatus for color display of flow velocity
AssigneeKabushiki Kaisha Toshiba
InventorsSatoshi Matsuo, Yasuo Miyajima
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An ultrasonic imaging apparatus comprises an ultrasonic transducer for emitting an ultrasonic beam onto an interest region of a living body containing a blood flow and outputting an echo signal, a correlation circuit for determining a correlation of the signals obtained from the ultrasonic transducer and a velocity calculation circuit for calculating the velocity of the blood flow from the correlation data obtained by the correlation circuit. A zero shift process circuit zero-shifts the velocity data obtained from the velocity calculation circuit and compresses the zero-shifted velocity data in correspondance with an amount of zero shift. The zero-shifted flow velocity data is displayed within a possible display range.
Claims10
An ultrasonic imaging apparatus comprising:
- ultrasonic transducer means for emitting an ultrasonic beam onto an object containing flow materials and for converting echoes of said beam from the object into echo signals;
- calculation means for processing the echo signals output from said ultrasonic transducer means, for calculating a velocity of the flow materials from said echo signals, and for outputting a velocity signal corresponding to the calculated velocity;
- zero shift means for zero-shifting, by a predetermined shift amount, the velocity signal output from said calculation means to produce a zero-shifted velocity signal;
- and
- means for displaying in one of a plurality of color levels the zero-shifted velocity signal output from said zero shift means;
- wherein at times when the velocity of the flow materials in one direction exceeds a display limit, the velocity signal corresponds to another velocity of the flow materials in an opposite direction within the display limit, and the production of the zero-shifted velocity signal prevents the display of a color level corresponding to said another velocity in the opposite direction.
An ultrasonic imaging apparatus comprising:
- ultrasonic transducer means for emitting an ultrasonic beam onto a region of interest of a living body containing a blood flow and for converting echoes of said beam from the object into echo signals;
- Doppler processing means coupled to said ultrasonic transducer means for fast-Fourier transforming the echo signals to produce Doppler data;
- tomograph signal output means coupled to said transducer means for processing the echo signals and outputting tomographic image data;
- calculation means for processing the echo signals output from said ultrasonic transducer means, for calculating a velocity of the blood flow from the echo signals, and for outputting velocity data;
- shift data means for selectively producing shift data corresponding to one of a plurality of shift amounts;
- zero shift means for zero-shifting the velocity data output from said calculation means in accordance with the shift data produced from said shift data means to produce zero-shifted velocity data, for compressing the zero-shifted velocity data in accordance with the shift amount, and for outputting the compressed zero-shifted velocity data;
- a digital scan converter for receiving the Doppler data, the compressed zero-shifted velocity data, and the tomographic image data, and for selectively outputting the Doppler, compressed zero-shifted velocity, and tomographic image data;
- and
- means for displaying in one of a plurality of color levels the compressed zero-shifted velocity data from said digital scan converter, wherein the plurality of color levels corresponds to a first range of velocities of the blood flow for zero-shifted velocity data and corresponds to a second range of velocities wider than the first range for compressed zero-shifted velocity data;
- wherein at times when the velocity of the blood flow in one direction exceeds a display limit, the velocity data corresponds to another velocity of the blood flow in an opposite direction within the display limit, and the output of compressed zero-shifted velocity data prevents the display of a color level corresponding to said another velocity in the opposite direction.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.