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US 4,785,818 AGranted
Method and means or dynamically weighted temporal averaging of pixel data
AssigneeGeneral Electric Company
InventorWilliam R. Hardin
Life of this patent
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AssigneeGeneral Electric Company
InventorWilliam R. Hardin
Estimating the term…
Pixel data stored in a display memory of an ultrasonic scanning system is updated in response to weighted new pixel data generated from a reflected ultrasonic wave averaged with weighted stored pixel data. A measure of difference between the new pixel data and the stored pixel data is obtained, and the weighting factor for the new pixel data increases as a function of the difference while the weighting factor for the stored data decreases as a function of the difference whereby small differences in the signals due to noise are suppressed while large differences in the pixel values due to fast moving echogenic targets such as a heart valve are enhanced. The weighting of the two pixel values can further include a factor depending on the selected display dynamic range of the ultrasonic scanner. The weighted values of the pixels are stored in memories that are addressed by the pixel value and the measure of difference between the present intensity value and the stored intensity value, and the outputs of the memories are then combined such as by averaging to obtain an updated pixel value for storage in the image memory.
In an ultrasonic scanner system in which video scanned data is defined for a plurality of addressable pixels in an electron beam display, a method of selectively updating stored pixel intensity data in response to repetitive ultrasonic beam scans whereby moving tissue imaging is enhanced while suppressing random noise comprising the steps of
In an ultrasonic scanner system in which video scanned data is defined for a plurality of addressable pixels in an electron beam display, a method of selectively updating stored pixel intensity data in response to an ultrasonic beam scan comprising the steps of
In an ultrasonic scanner system in which ultrasonic beam scan intensity data is defined for a plurality of addressable pixels in an electron beam display, apparatus for updating stored pixel data in response to repetitive ultrasonic beam scan comprising
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.