Analysis and measurement of temporal tissue velocity information

A method for generating curved anatomical M-Mode displays in ultrasonic investigations of living biological structures during movement employing an ultrasonic transducer, comprising the steps of:

• acquiring a sequence of ultrasonic image frames covering a spatial region;
• computing tissue velocities for all points inside a spatial region of interest based on the information content in said ultrasonic frames;
• providing at least one curved anatomical M-Mode polygon positioned in relationship to said ultrasonic frames so as not to coincide with any straight line;
• subjecting said ultrasonic image frames and said tissue velocities to computer processing on the basis of said at least one curved anatomical M-Mode polygon, whereby interpolation along said at least one curved anatomical M-Mode polygon is effected using values from said tissue velocities;
• and
• displaying the resulting computed curved anatomical M-Mode display on a display unit.

A method for computing regional phase information about the wall motion in ultrasonic investigations of the human heart employing an ultrasonic transducer, comprising the steps of:

• acquiring a sequence of ultrasonic image frames covering a spatial region;
• computing tissue velocities for all points inside a spatial region of interest based on the information content in said ultrasonic frames;
• providing at least one arbitrary polygon positioned in relationship to said ultrasonic frames;
• extracting the temporal evolution of the tissue velocities for a number of points distributed around the said polygon;
• and
• computing an estimate of the phase of the motion for said points based on said temporal evolutions of tissue velocities.

A method for computing spatial regional phase images of the wall motion in ultrasonic investigations of the human heart employing an ultrasonic transducer, comprising the steps of:

• acquiring a sequence of ultrasonic image frames covering a spatial region;
• computing tissue thickening velocities for all points inside a spatial region of interest based on the information content in said ultrasonic frames;
• extracting the temporal evolution of the tissue thickening velocities for every point inside the said spatial region;
• computing an estimate of the phase of the motion for said points based on said temporal evolutions of tissue velocities;
• and
• displaying the resulting phase values as a spatial image.