3D+t Vector Flow Imaging with Transverse Oscillations and Doppler Estimator

Abstract

Blood flow evaluation with ultrasound is an extremely usefull tool in the clinics in many different situations. The evaluation of the real 2D or 3D flow direction and amplitude remains an unsolved issue and a challenge to access to the full and correct flow characteristic. In this paper, an advanced 3D ultrasound system is used to estimate the 3D blood flow in an home made phantom with a laminar flow. After the acquisitions, the 3D processing of the beamformed volumes allow the creation of transverse oscillations and motion estimation in several direction to create a complex vector flow map in 3D. The obtained streamlines are coherent through the cycle and the qualitative evaluation of the flow is possible, even in direction perpendicular to the US beam axis. The proposed setup and method must be evaluated more deeply in more complex geometries, but this work demonstrates the feasibility to use such advanced system in 3D+t flow evaluation.