Ultrasonic blood vessel imaging system and method

摘要

A transcutaneous system and method for real time imaging of blood vessels. The system includes a transducer having one or more arrays of transducer elements for scanning across or along blood vessels. Preferably, the transducer includes three arrays arranged in an H-shape configuration to scan two spaced cross-sections of the vessel and a lengthwise section of a vessel under examination. The transducer elements are sequentially connected to a pulsed Doppler flow detection system which detects blood flow at various depths under each element and forms a display of the location and depth of detected blood flow to indicate vessel location, cross-section and orientation.