IEEE Trans Ultrason Ferroelectr Freq Control. 2014 Feb;61(2):314-24. doi: 10.1109/TUFFC.2014.6722616.
Several ultrasound (US) methods have been recently proposed to produce 2-D velocity vector fields with high temporal and spatial resolution. However, the real-time implementation in US scanners is heavily hampered by the high calculation power required. In this work, we report a real-time vector Doppler imaging method which has been integrated in an open research system. The proposed approach exploits the plane waves transmitted from two sub-arrays of a linear probe to estimate the velocity vectors in 512 sample volumes aligned along the probe axis. The method has been tested for accuracy and reproducibility through simulations and in vitro experiments. Simulations over a 0° to 90° angle range of a 0.5 m/s peak parabolic flow have yielded 0.75° bias and 1.1° standard deviation for direction measurement, and 0.6 cm/s bias with 3.1% coefficient of variation for velocity assessment. In vitro tests have supported the simulation results. Preliminary measurements on the carotid artery of a volunteer have highlighted the real-time system capability of imaging complex flow configurations in an intuitive, easy, and quick way, as shown in a sample supplementary movie. These features have allowed reproducible peak velocity measurements to be obtained, as needed for quantitative investigations on patients.
最近已经提出了几种超声（US）方法来产生具有高时间和空间分辨率的 2-D 速度矢量场。然而，由于所需的高计算能力，US 扫描仪的实时实现受到了严重阻碍。在这项工作中，我们报告了一种已集成在开放研究系统中的实时矢量多普勒成像方法。所提出的方法利用从线性探头的两个子阵发射的平面波来估计沿着探头轴排列的 512 个样本体积中的速度矢量。该方法已通过模拟和体外实验进行了准确性和可重复性测试。在 0.5 m/s 峰值抛物线流的 0°至 90°角度范围内进行的模拟产生了 0.75°的偏差和 1.1°的方向测量标准差，以及 0.6 cm/s 的偏差和 3.1%的速度评估变化系数。体外测试支持了模拟结果。对志愿者颈动脉的初步测量突出了实时系统以直观、简单和快速的方式成像复杂流动结构的能力，如补充样本电影所示。这些功能允许获得可重复的峰值速度测量，这是对患者进行定量研究所必需的。
