A new pulsed wave Doppler ultrasound system to measure bloodvelocities beyond the Nyquist limit

Conventional pulsed wave (PW) Doppler ultrasound systems measure blood velocities unambiguously as long as the velocities are less than the Nyquist velocity. Here, a new PW Doppler ultrasound system is described, which can measure velocities up to 4.5 times higher than the Nyquist velocity. The new PW system presented here utilizes two ultrasound carrier frequencies, such that an appropriate processing of the Doppler frequencies results in an extended mean-velocity range. With this extended mean-velocity information, the complex Doppler signal is interpolated to reconstruct aliased Doppler spectra. The interpolation algorithm has been tested by computer simulations demonstrating the capabilities and limits. The integration into a commercial Doppler scanner allowed the evaluation of the new PW system in real time. In vitro and in vivo tests demonstrate the effective reconstruction of highly aliased Doppler spectra     

激光多普勒效应在爆炸冲击测量中的应用研究

将激光多普勒效应应用于爆炸圆筒实验中,实现了圆筒表面形变过程的动态测量.系统采用了外差式纵向激光多普勒测量结构,利用1/2波片、1/4波片与偏振分光棱镜相结合及外差式参考光结构,有效地提高了多普勒信号的强度与信噪比.在信号处理方面,采用了短时傅里叶的频谱分析方法,提高了系统噪声适应能力和信号处理速度;另外采用了相位差频谱校正技术,实现了频率细化和精度提高.最后给出了在不同爆炸载荷条件下的圆筒实验测量结果.     

Design and implementation of a smartphone-based portable ultrasound pulsed-wave Doppler device for blood flow measurement

Blood flow measurement using Doppler ultrasound has become a useful tool for diagnosing cardiovascular diseases and as a physiological monitor. Recently, pocket-sized ultrasound scanners have been introduced for portable diagnosis. The present paper reports the implementation of a portable ultrasound pulsed-wave (PW) Doppler flowmeter using a smartphone. A 10-MHz ultrasonic surface transducer was designed for the dynamic monitoring of blood flow velocity. The directional baseband Doppler shift signals were obtained using a portable analog circuit system. After hardware processing, the Doppler signals were fed directly to a smartphone for Doppler spectrogram analysis and display in real time. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of the use of this system for medical ultrasound Doppler signal processing. A Couette flow phantom, consisting of two parallel disks with a 2-mm gap, was used to evaluate and calibrate the device. Doppler spectrograms of porcine blood flow were measured using this stand-alone portable device under the pulsatile condition. Subsequently, in vivo portable system verification was performed by measuring the arterial blood flow of a rat and comparing the results with the measurement from a commercial ultrasound duplex scanner. All of the results demonstrated the potential for using a smartphone as a novel embedded system for portable medical ultrasound applications.     

选带细化频谱分析在超声波流量测量中的应用

通过中频调制为基础提取流体速度方向信息,引入选带细化频谱分析技术对解调后多普勒信号进行高精度的频谱估计,该方法主要有三个方面的优点:能判断流速的方向;降低流速测量下限;提高了流速测量的动态响应速度、实时性以及稳定性.在此基础上,以数字信号处理器(DSP)为平台设计了超声流量计,实验分析表明1 024点ZOOM-FFT算法在选定频带范围内与16 384点FFT有相近的分辨率.     

Graphics Processing Unit-Based High-Frame-Rate Color Doppler Ultrasound Processing

Color Doppler ultrasound is a routinely used diagnostic tool for assessing blood flow information in real time. The required signal processing is computationally intensive, involving autocorrelation, linear filtering, median filtering, and thresholding. Because of the large amount of data and high computational requirement, color Doppler signal processing has been mainly implemented on custom-designed hardware, with software-based implementation - particularly on a general- purpose CPU - not being successful. In this paper, we describe the use of a graphics processing unit for implementing signal-processing algorithms for color Doppler ultrasound that achieves a frame rate of 160 fps for frames comprising 500 scan lines times 128 range samples, with each scan line being obtained from an ensemble size of 8 with an 8-tap FIR clutter filter.     

A new high resolution color flow system using an eigendecomposition-based adaptive filter for clutter rejection

We present a new signal processing strategy for high frequency color flow mapping in moving tissue environments. A new application of an eigendecomposition-based clutter rejection filter is presented with modifications to deal with high blood-to-clutter ratios (BCR). Additionally, a new method for correcting blood velocity estimates with an estimated tissue motion profile is detailed. The performance of the clutter filter and velocity estimation strategies is quantified using a new swept-scan signal model. In vivo color flow images are presented to illustrate the potential of the system for mapping blood flow in the microcirculation with external tissue motion.     

A new high resolution color flow system using an eigendecomposition-based adaptive filter for clutter rejection

We present a new signal processing strategy for high frequency color flow mapping in moving tissue environments. A new application of an eigendecomposition-based clutter rejection filter is presented with modifications to deal with high blood-to-clutter ratios (BCR). Additionally, a new method for correcting blood velocity estimates with an estimated tissue motion profile is detailed. The performance of the clutter filter and velocity estimation strategies is quantified using a new swept-scan signal model. In vivo color flow images are presented to illustrate the potential of the system for mapping blood flow in the microcirculation with external tissue motion.     

A new time-domain narrowband velocity estimation technique for Doppler ultrasound flow imaging. II. Comparative performance assessment

For pt.I see ibid., vol.45, no.4, pp.939-54 (1998). The statistical performance of the new 2-D narrowband time-domain root-MUSIC blood velocity estimator described previously is evaluated using both simulated and flow phantom wideband (50% fractional bandwidth) ultrasonic data. Comparisons are made with the standard 1-D Kasai estimator and two other wideband strategies: the time domain correlator and the wideband point maximum likelihood estimator. A special case of the root-MUSIC, the "spatial" Kasai, is also considered. Simulation and flow phantom results indicate that the root-MUSIC blood velocity estimator displays a superior ability to reconstruct spatial blood velocity information under a wide range of operating conditions. The root-MUSIC mode velocity estimator can be extended to effectively remove the clutter component from the sample volume data. A bimodal velocity estimator is formed by processing the signal subspace spanned by the eigenvectors corresponding to the two largest eigenvalues of the Doppler correlation matrix. To test this scheme, in vivo common carotid flow complex Doppler data was obtained from a commercially available color flow imaging system. Velocity estimates were made using a reduced form of this data corresponding to higher frame rates. The extended root-MUSIC approach was found to produce superior results when compared to both 1- and 2-D Kasai-type estimators that used initialized clutter filters. The results obtained using simulated, flow phantom, and in vivo data suggest that increased sensitivity as well as effective clutter suppression can be achieved using the root-MUSIC technique, and this may be particularly important for wideband high frame rate imaging applications.     

Embedded Doppler system for industrial in-line rheometry

Rheological fluid behavior characterization is crucial for the industrial production of cosmetics, food, pharmaceutics, adhesive, sealants, etc. For example, the measurement of specific rheological features at every step of the production chain is critical for product quality control. Such measurements are often limited to laboratory tests on product specimens because of technical difficulties. In this work, we present an embedded system suitable for in-line rheometric evaluation of highly filled polyurethane-based adhesives. This system includes an ultrasound front-end and a digital signal processing section integrated in a low-cost field-programmable gate array. The system measures the real-time velocity profile developed in the pipe by the fluid, employing a Doppler multigate technique. The high-resolution velocity profile, combined with a pressure drop measurement, allows an accurate evaluation of the flow consistency index, K, and the flow behavior index, n, of the interrogated fluid.     

Multigate transcranial Doppler ultrasound system with real-time embolic signal identification and archival

An integrated system for acquisition and processing of intracranial and extracranial Doppler signals and automatic embolic signal detection has been developed. The hardware basis of the system is a purpose-built acquisition/processing board that includes a multigate Doppler unit controlled through a computer. The signal-processing engine of the system contains a fast Fourier transform (FFT)-based, spectral-analysis unit and an embolic signal-detection unit using expert system reasoning theory. The system is designed so that up to four receive gates from a single transducer can be used to provide useful reasoning information to the embolic signal-detection unit. Alternatively, two transducers can be used simultaneously, either for bilateral transcranial Doppler (TCD) investigations or for simultaneous intra- and extracranial investigation of different arteries. The structure of the software will allow the future implementation of embolus detection algorithms that use the information from all four channels when a single transducer is used, or of independent embolus detection in two sets of two channels when two transducers are used. The user-friendly system has been tested in-vitro, and it has demonstrated a 93.6% sensitivity for micro-embolic signal (MES) identification. Preliminary in-vivo results also are encouraging.     

Target velocity estimation with FM and PW echo ranging Doppler systems I. Signal analysis

The theoretical foundation is presented for velocity estimation with a pulsed wave (PW) Doppler system transmitting linear FM signals. The Doppler system possesses echo ranging capabilities and is evaluated in the context of Doppler ultrasound for blood velocity measurement. The FM excitation signal is formulated and the received signal is derived for a single moving particle. This signal is similar to the transmitted signal, but with modified parameters due to Doppler effect and range. The demodulated received signal is subsequently derived and analyzed. It is shown that, due to the Doppler effect, this is a linear sweep signal as well. The velocity and range information obtainable from one and two consecutively received signals are described. The latter case establishes the basis for an FM Doppler system for blood velocity measurements.     

A new time-domain narrowband velocity estimation technique for Doppler ultrasound flow imaging. I. Theory

A significant improvement in blood velocity estimation accuracy can be achieved by simultaneously processing both temporal and spatial information obtained from a sample volume. Use of the spatial information becomes especially important when the temporal resolution is limited. By using a two-dimensional sequence of spatially sampled Doppler signal "snapshots" an improved estimate of the Doppler correlation matrix can be formed. Processing Doppler data in this fashion addresses the range-velocity spread nature of the distributed red blood cell target, leading to a significant reduction in spectral speckle. Principal component spectral analysis of the "snapshot" correlation matrix is shown to lead to a new and robust Doppler mode frequency estimator. By processing only the dominant subspace of the Doppler correlation matrix, the Cramer-Rao bounds on the estimation error of target velocity is significantly reduced in comparison to traditional narrowband blood velocity estimation methods and achieves almost the same local accuracy as a wideband estimator. A time-domain solution is given for the velocity estimate using the root-MUSIC algorithm, which makes the new estimator attractive for real-time implementation.     

Ultrasound simulation of complex flow velocity fields based on computational fluid dynamics

In this work, a simulation environment for the development of flow-related ultrasound algorithms is presented. Ultrasound simulations of realistic Doppler signals require accurate modeling of blood flow. Instead of using analytically described flow behavior, complex blood movement can be derived from velocity fields obtained with computational fluid dynamics (CFD). By further modeling blood as a collection of point scatterers, resulting RF-signals can be efficiently retrieved using an existing ultrasound simulation model. The main aim of this paper is to elaborate on creating CFD-based phantoms for ultrasound simulations. The coupling of a computed flow field with an ultrasound model offers flexible control of flow and ultrasound imaging parameters, beneficial for improving and developing imaging algorithms. The proposed method was validated in a straight tube with a stationary parabolic velocity profile and further demonstrated by an eccentrically stenosis carotid bifurcation. The estimated flow velocities are in good agreement with the CFD reference, both for color flow imaging and pulsed-wave doppler simulations. The presented method can also be extended to include wall mechanics simulations in future work.     

Real-time tracking of time-varying velocity using a self-mixing laser diode

A new method is proposed for estimating the time-varying velocity of a moving target with a low-cost laser sensor using optical feedback interferometry. A new algorithm is proposed to track velocity variations from real-time analysis of the output signal of a self-mixing laser diode. This signal is strongly corrupted by a multiplicative noise caused by the speckle effect, which occurs very often with noncooperative targets used in many industrial applications. The proposed signal processing method is based on a second order adaptive linear predictor filter, which enables us to track the digital instantaneous Doppler frequency, which is proportional to the velocity. A model of the laser diode output signal is proposed, and it is shown that the sensor and its associated algorithm have a global first-order lowpass transfer function with a cutoff frequency expressed as a function of the speckle perturbations, the signal to noise ratio and the mean Doppler frequency. Numerical as well as experimental results illustrate the properties of this sensor.     

Characteristics of acoustic streaming created and measured bypulsed Doppler ultrasound

Self measurement of acoustic streaming by Doppler ultrasound could be used to evaluate properties of fluids such as viscosity or the coagulation of blood. To characterize acoustic streaming caused by pulsed ultrasonic beams, Doppler signal processing was used to measure streaming velocity under a variety of conditions in vitro using blood and water. Velocities as high as 5 mm/s were measured in blood at the diagnostic power levels (3.5 mW) used in 20 MHz catheter velocimetry. It was found that streaming decreases with distance due to absorption and beam spreading, increases with applied acoustic power, and decreases with increased viscosity during blood coagulation. However, the increase in velocity with acoustic power is nonlinear with an exponent of 0.67 for water and 1.42 for blood even though the radiation force as measured by deflection of a suspended transducer is linear with power. The time constant of streaming to a step change in acoustic power is 80 ms in blood and 200 ms in water. It is concluded that streaming is measurable in pulsed Doppler beams, that it could produce artifacts or unintended effects, and that it could be used to characterize fluid properties and to detect coagulation of whole blood     

Isomorphism between pulsed-wave Doppler ultrasound anddirection-of-arrival estimation. I. Basic principles

Direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation of signals is an important area of research in sonar and radar signal processing. Over the last few decades, numerous techniques have been developed for high-resolution DOA estimation. In this paper, we show that velocity measurement using pulsed-wave Doppler ultrasound and DOA estimation are isomorphic problems. We discuss a number of DOA methods and their potential application to flow velocity measurement using ultrasound. Wide-band DOA methods are of special interest because the pulses used for Doppler ultrasound are also wide band. These wide-band methods generally involve a preprocessing step to convert wideband signals to narrow band before applying high-resolution techniques. Application of DOA methods to Doppler ultrasound provides tools for high-resolution velocity measurement, identification of multiple velocity components within a sample volume, and clutter rejection     

Blood flow imaging--A new real-time, 2-D flow imaging technique

This paper presents a new method for the visualization of two-dimensional (2-D) blood flow in ultrasound imaging systems called blood flow imaging (BFI). Conventional methods of color flow imaging (CFI) and power Doppler (PD) techniques are limited as the velocity component transversal to the ultrasound beam cannot be estimated from the received Doppler signal. The BFI relies on the preservation and display of the speckle pattern originating from the blood flow scatterer signal, and it provides qualitative information of the blood flow distribution and movement in any direction of the image. By displaying speckle pattern images acquired with a high frame rate in slow motion, the blood flow movement can be visually tracked from frame to frame. The BFI is easily combined with conventional CFI and PD methods, and the resulting display modes have been shown to have several advantages compared to CFI or PD methods alone. Two different display modes have been implemented: one combining BFI with conventional CFI, and one combining BFI with PD. Initial clinical trials have been performed to assess the clinical usefulness of BFI. The method especially has potential in vascular imaging, but it also shows potential in other clinical applications.     

一种提高多普勒测速仪测频精度的方法

多普勒测速仪是水面或水下平台速度测量的主要设备。提出了利用随机样本一致(Random Sample Consensus,RANSAC)算法来估计多普勒频移,从而使速度测量具有更高的稳定性。多普勒测速仪信号处理的核心是测量多普勒频移,该方法利用回波复相关相位是多普勒频移的一次函数来估计多普勒频移,进而计算得到平台速度,在估计频移时采用RANSAC算法以提高测频精度。为了验证方法有效性,对信号形式为连续波(Continuous Wave,CW)脉冲对的情形进行了仿真。结果表明,提出方法的稳定性得到明显提高。     

Novel instrument for high-resolution ultrasound flow imaging

In multigate systems employed in Doppler flow-imaging equipment, the velocities of targets located at different ranges along the ultrasound beam axis are simultaneously detected. Typically, to reduce the computation efforts, this processing is aimed at extracting a single parameter (e.g., the mean velocity) from each signal. In this article, a novel ultrasound multigate instrument is presented capable of providing a detailed analysis of Doppler signals originated from 64 different range cells. By means of a dedicated high-speed fast-Fourier transform processor, these signals are transformed into the frequency domain without loss of information. The implementation of the new multigate system is described here, and the pieces of information which it can provide are discussed. Significant results obtained in vitro and in vivo demonstrate that the new instrument is capable of accurately reproducing the actual velocity profiles of the interrogated flow. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Int J Imaging Syst Technol, 8, 438–443, 1997     

Coherent Doppler lidar signal spectrum with wind turbulence

The average signal spectrum (periodogram) for coherent Doppler lidar is calculated for a turbulent wind field. Simple approximations are compared with the exact calculation. The effects of random errors in the zero velocity reference, the effects of averaging spectral estimates by use of multiple lidar pulses, and the effects of the range dependence of the lidar signal power over the range gate are included. For high spatial resolution measurements the lidar signal power is concentrated around one spectral estimate (spectral bin), and correct interpretation of the contribution from turbulence is difficult because of the effects of spectral leakage. For range gates that are larger than the lidar pulse volume, the signal power is contained in many spectral bins and the effects of turbulence can be determined accurately for constant signal power over the range gate and for the far-field range dependence of the signal power.