Microvascular ultrasound contrast imaging with adaptive time processing

摘要

Ultrasound diagnostic imaging systems produce contrast-enhanced images that are processed differently during different phases of contrast agent wash-in. During the initial phase of contrast wash-in, imaging is performed using pixels that are processed by maximum intensity detection to better reflect sudden changes in contrast intensity. During the later stages of contrast wash-in, a time averaging process is used to reduce the effects of noise and motion on the pixels. During the middle period of peak enhancement, a combination of both pixel values processed by both techniques is used. In other aspects, the wash-in period is characterized by an appearance phase, an increase phase and a peak phase, and contrast pixel data is adaptively processed in different ways during these periods.