Method and apparatus for noise suppression in a doppler ultrasound system.

Abstract

Ultrasound echo data is analyzed to compress jump noises by recalculating the value of data points whose magnitude exceeds the magnitude of a previous point by more than a predefined threshold. Any data that exceeds the threshold is recalculated according to the value of the slopes of the points that precede and after the point to be replaced. The value by which a data point is compressed is selected so that the DC component of the points after compression is nearly equal to the DC component of the points prior to the jump noise. In addition, to remove saturating clutter in a Doppler display or audio signal, the present invention determines if the power spectrum of the Doppler signals to be displayed exceeds a maximum power display and if so scales a portion of the I and Q signals that comprise the Doppler power spectrum by the ratio of the maximum power spectrum computed and the maximum that can be displayed.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.