Verfahren zur Bestimmung von Gewebedeformation und Gewebegeschwindigkeitsvektoren mittels Ultraschallbilddarstellung

摘要

A method for estimating tissue velocity vectors and oriented strain from ultrasonic diagnostic imaging data, comprises the following steps: Acquiring ultrasound imaging data from an object by transmitting ultrasound beams against the said object and receiving the corresponding reflected beams by the said object; Defining at least one or a certain number of reference points in an ultrasonic image field corresponding to the ultrasonic image data obtained from evaluation of the ultrasonic reflected beams; Determining the direction of motion and the velocity vector of the said reference points from the ultrasonic image data; According to the present invention the ultrasound imaging data consist in a sequence of at least two image frames, said images being two dimensional images or three dimensional data; The imaging data are B-mode grey-scale echographic images; The velocity of motion of each reference point between two successive B-mode image frames are determined by applying a so called particle image velocimetry technique abbreviated as PIV. Any component of the strain is then obtained from time integration of strain-rate that is evaluated from the gradient of velocity estimated from the velocity data in two or more points.