METHODS AND SYSTEMS FOR PERFORMING COLOR DOPPLER ULTRASOUND IMAGING

摘要

The invention provides a color Doppler ultrasound imaging method. The method includes acquiring a plurality of sparse color Doppler ultrasound image frames and B-mode ultrasound image frames. The color Doppler and B-mode image frames are then pre-processed before estimating a vector flow based on said frames by means of solving a flow vector field in a whole field of view of the image frames through an optimization framework, in which a mask is adapted to define a sparse area of observed color Doppler measurements within the sparse color Doppler image frames. A new color Doppler image frame is generated based on this estimate and included in the output image.