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Vector flow techniques in the field of ultrasound encompass different pulse emission and estimation strategies. Numerous techniques have been introduced over the years, and recently commercial implementations usable in the clinic have been made. A number of clinical papers using different vector velocity approaches have been published. This review will give an overview of the most significant in vivo results achieved with ultrasound vector flow techniques, and will outline some of the possible clinical applications for vector velocity estimation in the future.

Transverse oscillation (TO) is a real-time ultrasound vector flow method implemented on a commercial scanner. The TO setup was examined on a flowrig with constant and pulsatile flow. Subsequently, 25 patients undergoing cardiac bypass surgery were scanned intraoperatively with TO on the ascending aorta and compared to transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) and pulmonary artery catheter thermodilution (PACTD). On the flowrig, TO had a precision of 5.5%, 9.4% and 14.7%, a percentage error of 18.2%, 14.6% and 40.7%, and a mean bias of 0.4 cm/s, 36.8 ml/min and 32.4 ml/min for velocity and flow rate (constant and pulsatile) estimation. The correlation coefficients for all flowrig evaluations were 0.99 indicating systematic bias. After bias correction, the percentage error was reduced to 11.5%, 12.6% and 15.9% for velocity and flow rate (constant and pulsatile) estimation. In the in vivo setup, TO, TEE, and PACTD had a precision of 21.9%, 13.7%, and 12.0%. TO compared with TEE and PACTD had a mean bias of 12.6 cm/s and -0.08 l/min, and a percentage error of 23.4%, and 36.7%, respectively. The percentage error was reduced to 22.9% for the TEE comparison, but increased to 43.8% for the PACTD comparison, after correction for the systematic bias found in the flowrig. TO is a reliable and precise method for velocity and flow rate estimation on a flowrig. However, TO with the present setup, is not interchangeable with PACTD for cardiac volume flow estimation, but is a reliable and precise angle-independent ultrasound alternative for velocity estimation of cardiac flow.

Conventional ultrasound (US) methods for blood velocity estimation only provide one-dimensional and angle-dependent velocity estimates; thus, the complexity of cardiac flow has been difficult to measure. To circumvent these limitations, the Transverse Oscillation (TO) vector flow method has been proposed. The vector flow method implemented on a commercial scanner provided real-time, angle-independent estimates of cardiac blood flow. Epicardiac and epiaortic, intraoperative US examinations were performed on three patients with stenosed coronary arteries scheduled for bypass surgery. Repeating cyclic beat-to-beat flow patterns were seen in the ascending aorta and pulmonary artery of each patient, but these patterns varied between patients. Early systolic retrograde flow filling the aortic sinuses was seen in the ascending aorta as well as early systolic retrograde flow in the pulmonary artery. In diastole, stable vortices in aortic sinuses of the ascending aorta created central antegrade flow. A stable vortex in the right atrium was seen during the entire heart cycle. The measurements were compared with estimates obtained intraoperatively with conventional spectral Doppler US using a transesophageal and an epiaortic approach. Mean differences in peak systole velocity of 11% and 26% were observed when TO was compared with transesophageal echocardiography and epiaortic US, respectively. In one patient, the cardiac output derived from vector velocities was compared with pulmonary artery catheter thermodilution technique and showed a difference of 16%. Vector flow provides real-time, angle-independent vector velocities of cardiac blood flow. The technique can potentially reveal new information of cardiovascular physiology and give insight into blood flow dynamics.

In this study clinically relevant ultrasound images generated with synthetic aperture sequential beamforming (SASB) is compared to images generated with a conventional technique. The advantage of SASB is the ability to produce high resolution ultrasound images with a high frame rate and at the same time massively reduce the amount of generated data. SASB was implemented in a system consisting of a conventional ultrasound scanner connected to a PC via a research interface. This setup enables simultaneous recording with both SASB and conventional technique. Eighteen volunteers were ultrasound scanned abdominally, and 84 sequence pairs were recorded. Each sequence pair consists of two simultaneous recordings of the same anatomical location with SASB and conventional B-mode imaging. The images were evaluated in terms of spatial resolution, contrast, unwanted artifacts, and penetration depth of the ultrasound beam. Five ultrasound experts (radiologists) evaluated the sequence pairs in a side-by-side comparison, and the results show that image quality using SASB was better than conventional B-mode imaging. 73 % of the evaluations favored SASB, and a probability of 70 % was calculated for a new radiologist to prefer SASB over conventional imaging, if a new sequence was recorded. There was no significant difference in penetration depth.

Explososcan is the 'gold standard' for real-time 3D medical ultrasound imaging. In this paper, 3D synthetic aperture imaging is compared to Explososcan by simulation of 3D point spread functions. The simulations mimic a 32×32 element prototype transducer. The transducer mimicked is a dense matrix phased array with a pitch of 300 m, made by Vermon. For both imaging techniques, 289 emissions are used to image a volume spanning 60° in both the azimuth and elevation direction and 150mm in depth. This results for both techniques in a frame rate of 18 Hz. The implemented synthetic aperture technique reduces the number of transmit channels from 1024 to 256, compared to Explososcan. In terms of FWHM performance, was Explososcan and synthetic aperture found to perform similar. At 90mm depth is Explososcan's FWHM performance 7% better than that of synthetic aperture. Synthetic aperture improved the cystic resolution, which expresses the ability to detect anechoic cysts in a uniform scattering media, at all depths except at Explososcan's focus point. Synthetic aperture reduced the cyst radius, R20dB, at 90mm depth by 48%. Synthetic aperture imaging was shown to reduce the number of transmit channels by four and still, generally, improve the imaging quality.

The abdominal aorta (AA) is predisposed to development of abdominal aneurysms (AAA), a focal dilatation with fatal consequences if left untreated. The blood flow patterns is thought to play an important role in the development of AAA. The purpose of this work is to investigate the blood flow patterns within a group of healthy volunteers (six females, eight males) aged 23 to 76 years to identify changes and differences related to age and gender. The healthy volunteers were categorized by gender (male/female) and age (below/above 35 years). Subject-specific flow and geometry data were acquired using the research interface on a Profocus ultrasound scanner (B-K Medical, Herlev, Denmark) and segmentation of 3D magnetic resonance angiography (Magnetom Trio, Siemens Healthcare, Erlangen, Germany). The largest average diameter was among the elderly males (19.7 (± 1.33) mm) and smallest among the young females (12.4 (± 0.605) mm). The highest peak systolic velocity was in the young female group (1.02 (± 0.336) m/s) and lowest in the elderly male group (0.836 (± 0.127) m/s). A geometrical change with age was observed as the AA becomes more bended with age. This also affects the blood flow velocity patterns, which are markedly different from young to elderly. Thus, changes in blood flow patterns in the AA related to age and gender are observed. Further investigations are needed to determine the relation between changes in blood flow patterns and AAA development.

Ultrasonic colour Doppler is an imaging technique that combines anatomical information derived using ultrasonic pulse-echo techniques with velocity information derived using ultrasonic Doppler techniques to generate colour-coded maps of tissue velocity superimposed on grey-scale images of tissue anatomy. The most common use of the technique is to image the movement of blood through the heart, arteries and veins, but it may also be used to image the motion of solid tissues such as the heart walls. Colour Doppler imaging is now provided on almost all commercial ultrasound machines, and has been found to be of great value in assessing blood flow in many clinical conditions. Although the method for obtaining the velocity information is in many ways similar to the method for obtaining the anatomical information, it is technically more demanding for a number of reasons. It also has a number of weaknesses, perhaps the greatest being that in conventional systems, the velocities measured and thus displayed are the components of the flow velocity directly towards or away from the transducer, while ideally the method would give information about the magnitude and direction of the three-dimensional flow vectors. This review briefly introduces the principles behind colour Doppler imaging and describes some clinical applications. It then describes the basic components of conventional colour Doppler systems and the methods used to derive velocity information from the ultrasound signal. Next, a number of new techniques that seek to overcome the vector problem mentioned above are described. Finally, some examples of vector velocity images are presented.

In this paper results from a non-linear AS (angular spectrum) based ultrasound simulation program are compared to water-tank measurements. A circular concave transducer with a diameter of 1 inch (25.4 mm) is used as the emitting source. The measured pulses are first compared with the linear simulation program Field II, which will be used to generate the source for the AS simulation. The generated non-linear ultrasound field is measured by a hydrophone in the focal plane. The second harmonic component from the measurement is compared with the AS simulation, which is used to calculate both fundamental and second harmonic fields. The focused piston transducer with a center frequency of 5 MHz is excited by a waveform generator emitting a 6-cycle sine wave. The hydrophone is mounted in the focal plane 118 mm from the transducer. The point spread functions at the focal depth from Field II and measurements are illustrated. The FWHM (full width at half maximum) values are 1.96 mm for the measurement and 1.84 mm for the Field II simulation. The fundamental and second harmonic components of the experimental results are plotted compared with the AS simulations. The RMS (root mean square) errors of the AS simulations are 7.19% and 10.3% compared with the fundamental and second harmonic components of the measurements.

Focusing and apodization are an essential part of signal processing in ultrasound imaging. Although the fundamental principles are simple, the dramatic increase in computational power of CPUs, GPUs, and FPGAs motivates the development of software based beamformers, which further improves image quality (and the accuracy of velocity estimation). For developing new imaging methods, it is important to establish proof-of-concept before using resources on real-time implementations. With this in mind, an effective and versatile Matlab toolbox written in C++ has been developed to assist in developing new beam formation strategies. It is a general 3D implementation capable of handling a multitude of focusing methods, interpolation schemes, and parametric and dynamic apodization. Despite being flexible, it is capable of exploiting parallelization on a single computer, on a cluster, or on both. On a single computer, it mimics the parallization in a scanner containing multiple beam formers. The focusing is determined using the positions of the transducer elements, presence of virtual sources, and the focus points. For interpolation, a number of interpolation schemes can be chosen, e.g. linear, polynomial, or cubic splines. Apodization can be specified by a number of window functions of fixed size applied on the individual elements as a function of distance to a reference point, or it can be dynamic with an expanding or contracting aperture to obtain a constant F-number, or both. On a standard PC with an Intel Quad-Core Xeon E5520 processor running at 2.26 GHz, the toolbox can beamform 300.000 points using 700.000 data samples in 3 seconds using a transducer with 192 elements, dynamic apodization in transmit and receive, and cubic splines for interpolation. This is 19 times faster than our previous toolbox.

Spectral velocity estimation is considered the gold standard in medical ultrasound. Peak systole (PS), end diastole (ED), and resistive index (RI) are used clinically. Angle correction is performed using a flow angle set manually. With Transverse Oscillation (TO) velocity estimates the flow angle, peak systole (PSTO), end diastole (EDTO), and resistive index (RITO) are estimated. This study investigates if these clinical parameters are estimated equally good using spectral and TO data. The right common carotid arteries of three healthy volunteers were scanned longitudinally. Average TO flow angles and std were calculated { 52±18 ; 55±23 ; 60±16 }°. Spectral angles { 52 ; 56 ; 52 }° were obtained from the B-mode images. Obtained values are: PSTO{ 76±15 ; 89±28 ; 77±7 } cm/s, spectral PS { 77 ; 110 ; 76 } cm/s, EDTO{ 10±3 ; 14±8 ; 15±3 } cm/s, spectral ED { 18 ; 13 ; 20 } cm/s, RITO { 0.87±0.05 ; 0.79±0.21 ; 0.79±0.06 }, and spectral RI { 0.77 ; 0.88 ; 0.73 }. Vector angles are within ±two std of the spectral angle. TO velocity estimates are within ±three std of the spectral estimates. RITOare within ±two std of the spectral estimates. Preliminary data indicates that the TO and spectral velocity estimates are equally good. With TO there is no manual angle setting and no flow angle limitation. TO velocity estimation can also automatically handle situations where the angle varies over the cardiac cycle. More detailed temporal and spatial vector estimates with diagnostic potential are available with the TO velocity estimation.

An algorithm for deconvolution of medical ultrasound images is presented. The procedure involves estimation of the basic one-dimensional ultrasound pulse, determining the ratio of the covariance of the noise to the covariance of the reflection signal, and finally deconvolution of the rf signal from the transducer. Using pulse and covariance estimators makes the approach self-calibrating, as all parameters for the procedure are estimated from the patient under investigation. An example of use on a clinical, in-vivoimage is given. A 2 × 2 cm region of the portal vein in a liver is deconvolved. An increase in axial resolution by a factor of 2.4 is obtained. The procedure can also be applied to whole images, when it is ensured that the rf signal is properly measured. A method for doing that is outlined.

Based on physical models, it is indicated that the received pressure field in ultrasound B-mode images can be described by a convolution between a tissue reflection signal and the emitted pressure field. This result is used in a description of current image formation and in formulating a new processing scheme. The suggested estimator can take into account the dispersive attenuation, the temporal and spatial variation of the pulse, and the change in reflection strength and signal-to-noise ratio. Details of the algorithm and the estimation of parameters to be used are given. The performance is indicated by two examples. One is for a synthetic signal and the other is for data measured from a tissue mimicking phantom. The last example shows a finer speckle pattern, giving an increased resolution.

An algorithm for the estimation of one-dimensional in-vivoultrasound pulses is derived. The routine estimates a set of ARMA parameters describing the pulse and uses data from a number of adjacent rf lines. Using multiple lines results in a decrease in variance on the estimated parameters and significantly reduces the risk of terminating the algorithm at a local minimum. Examples from use on synthetic data confirms the reduction in variance and increased chance of successful minimization termination. Simulations are also reported indicating the relation between the one-dimensional pulse and the three-dimensional, attenuated ultrasound field for a concave transducer. Pulses are estimated from in-vivoliver data showing good resemblance to a pulse measured as the response from a planar reflector and then properly attenuated. The main application for the algorithm is to function as a preprocessing stage for deconvolution algorithms using parametric pulses.

The topography of thermally oxidized, structured silicon dioxide is investigated through simulations, atomic force microscopy, and a proposed analytical model. A 357 nm thick oxide is structured by removing regions of the oxide in a masked etch with either reactive ion etching or hydrofluoric acid. Subsequent thermal oxidation is performed in both dry and wet ambients in the temperature range 950°C to 1100°C growing a 205 ± 12 nm thick oxide in the etched mask windows. Lifting of the original oxide near the edge of the mask in the range 6 nm to 37 nm is seen with increased lifting for increasing processing temperatures. Oxides structured by reactive ion etching are lifted on average a factor of four more than oxides etched in hydrofluoric acid. Both simulations and the analytical model successfully predict the oxide topography qualitatively, showing that the mask lifting phenomenon is governed mainly by diffusion and the geometry of the oxide. Simulations also predict the oxide topography quantitatively, with an average root mean square deviation of 1.2 nm and a maximum deviation of 13 nm (39%) from the mean of the measured values.

The objective of this work is to investigate ultrasound (US) backscatter in the MHz range from fish to develop a realistic and reliable simulation model. The long term objective of the work is to develop the needed signal processing for fish species differentiation using US. In in-vitro experiments, a cod (Gadus morhua) was scanned with both a BK Medical ProFocus 2202 ultrasound scanner and a Toshiba Aquilion ONE computed tomography (CT) scanner. The US images of the fish were compared with US images created using the ultrasound simulation program Field II. The center frequency of the transducer is 10 MHz and the Full Width at Half Maximum (FWHM) at the focus point is 0.54 mm in the lateral direction. The transducer model in Field II was calibrated using a wire phantom to validate the simulated point spread function. The inputs to the simulation were the CT image data of the fish converted to simulated scatter maps. The positions of the point scatterers were assumed to be uniformly distributed. The scatter amplitudes were generated with a new method based on the segmented CT data in Hounsfield Units and backscatter data for the different types of tissues from the literature. The simulated US images reproduce most of the important characteristics of the measured US image.