Spread-Spectrum Beamforming and Clutter Filtering for Plane-Wave Color Doppler Imaging

Plane-wave imaging is desirable for its ability to achieve high frame rates, allowing the capture of fast dynamic events and continuous Doppler data. In most implementations of plane-wave imaging, multiple low-resolution images from different plane wave tilt angles are compounded to form a single hi...

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Veröffentlicht in:IEEE transactions on ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control. - 1986. - 63(2016), 11 vom: 01. Nov., Seite 1865-1877
1. Verfasser: Mansour, Omar (VerfasserIn)
Weitere Verfasser: Poepping, Tamie L, Lacefield, James C
Format: Online-Aufsatz
Sprache:English
Veröffentlicht: 2016
Zugriff auf das übergeordnete Werk:IEEE transactions on ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control
Schlagworte:Journal Article
Beschreibung
Zusammenfassung:Plane-wave imaging is desirable for its ability to achieve high frame rates, allowing the capture of fast dynamic events and continuous Doppler data. In most implementations of plane-wave imaging, multiple low-resolution images from different plane wave tilt angles are compounded to form a single high-resolution image, thereby reducing the frame rate. Compounding improves the lateral beam profile in the high-resolution image, but it also acts as a low-pass filter in slow time that causes attenuation and aliasing of signals with high Doppler shifts. This paper introduces a spread-spectrum color Doppler imaging method that produces high-resolution images without the use of compounding, thereby eliminating the tradeoff between beam quality, maximum unaliased Doppler frequency, and frame rate. The method uses a long, random sequence of transmit angles rather than a linear sweep of plane wave directions. The random angle sequence randomizes the phase of off-focus (clutter) signals, thereby spreading the clutter power in the Doppler spectrum, while keeping the spectrum of the in-focus signal intact. The ensemble of randomly tilted low-resolution frames also acts as the Doppler ensemble, so it can be much longer than a conventional linear sweep, thereby improving beam formation while also making the slow-time Doppler sampling frequency equal to the pulse repetition frequency. Experiments performed using a carotid artery phantom with constant flow demonstrate that the spread-spectrum method more accurately measures the parabolic flow profile of the vessel and outperforms conventional plane-wave Doppler in both contrast resolution and estimation of high flow velocities. The spread-spectrum method is expected to be valuable for Doppler applications that require measurement of high velocities at high frame rates
Beschreibung:Date Revised 20.11.2019
published: Print-Electronic
Citation Status PubMed-not-MEDLINE
ISSN:1525-8955