Simultaneous narrow-band ultrasonic strain-flow imaging

We are summarizing new research aimed at forming spatially and temporally registered combinations of strain and color-flow images using echo data recorded from a commercial ultrasound system. Applications include diagnosis of vascular disease and tumor malignancies. The challenge is to meet the diverse needs of each measurement. The approach is to first apply eigenfilters that separate echo components from moving tissues and blood flow, and then estimate blood velocity and tissue displacement from the filtered-IQ-signal phase modulations. At the cost of a lower acquisition frame rate, we find the autocorrelation strain estimator yields higher resolution strain estimate than the cross-correlator since estimates are made from ensembles at a single point in space. The technique is applied to in vivo carotid imaging, to demonstrate the sensitivity for strain-flow vascular imaging.