Method and apparatus using coded excitation in ultrasonic perfusion imaging

摘要

A method and an apparatus for perfusion imaging using coded excitation. Bursting pulses are scanned over the region of interest in one or more frames followed by scanning one or more encoded imaging pulses in each subsequent frame. The bursting pulse is intended to break contrast micro-bubbles within a transmit focal zone and therefore should have high mechanical index and low frequency. The basic concept is to use a very low-amplitude encoded pulse train to image the contrast agents. The low amplitude prevents the contrast bubbles in the transmit focal zone from being destroyed while imaging, and the coded excitation provides the necessary signal-to-noise ratio. The imaging pulses are transmitted during refilling of the transmit focal zone with contrast agent subsequent to transmission of the bursting pulse into the transmit focal zone. On receive, the receive vectors are decoded to form a compressed pulse.