Live high-frame-rate echocardiography

Abstract

We describe an advanced real-time high-speed echocardiographic system with live display while scanning. Images are acquired at rates up to 1000 per second for adult cardiac applications and are stored in computer memory. Images may be played back in slow motion or frame by frame to analyze cardiac motion at the millisecond time scale. Images are acquired using the T5 Duke University Phased Array Scanner that allows 32:1 hardware parallel processing in receive and uses a defocused transmit beam. Clinical scans of 70 patients at rates of 240 to 1000 fps showed adequate image quality for diagnostic purpose. We anticipate that high temporal resolution cardiac images will enable the realization of more accurate and new quantitative descriptors of cardiac function in disease and health.

Coded Excitation for Crosstalk Suppression in Multi-line Transmit Beamforming: Simulation Study and Experimental Validation

“…The CNR and CR of each cystic region were thus computed using Equations (2) and (3). Moreover, the last ROI was defined in the noise region ( Figure 11, N ROI ), where the SNR was computed based on signal in N ROI and B ROI using Equation (4). The results are presented in Table 1.…”

“…High frame rate imaging has recently gained increased attention in the field of echocardiography given its potential to reveal new areas of myocardial mechanics and blood flow analysis [1]. Among high frame rate imaging approaches, plane wave or diverging wave imaging are popular research topics due to their capacity to produce very high frame rates by scanning a given field-of-view (i.e., a 90-degree sector) with only a few transmissions [2][3][4]. However, the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), spatial and contrast resolution of the resulting images are degraded due to the lack of focusing.…”

Stochastic Rounding for Image Interpolation and Scan Conversion

“…Bad [81 ↔ 100], [16]. For scan conversion operations, T5D data files are www.ijacsa.thesai.org used after being acquired from Duke University's Experimental Ultrasound System, T5, [10], [17]. More information on Duke University's Experimental Ultrasound System, T5 can be found via [18], [19], [20].…”

Ultrasound Vector Flow Imaging—Part II: Parallel Systems

“…Intracardiac echo-PIV with conventional ultrasound scanners is therefore not accessible to children or to patients with tachycardia or under cardiac stress triggered by exercise or dobutamine (stress echocardiography). Parallel beamforming in reception can speed up the frame rates of cardiac images up to 5-10 times [82], [93], [94], which can thus solve the frame rate dilemma.…”