Tissue motion in blood velocity estimation and its simulation

Determination of blood velocities for color flow mapping systems involves both stationary echo cancelling and velocity estimation. Often the stationary echo cancelling filter is the limiting factor in color flow mapping and the optimization and further development of this filter is crucial to the improvement of color flow imaging.

Optimization based on in-vivo data is difficult since the blood and tissue signals cannot be accurately distinguished and the correct extend of the vessel under investigation is often unknown. This study introduces a model for the simulation of blood velocity data in which tissue motion is included.

Tissue motion from breathing, heart beat, and vessel pulsation were determined based on in-vivo RF-data obtained from 10 healthy volunteers. The measurements were taken at the carotid artery at one condition and in the liver at three conditions. Each measurement was repeated 10 times to cover the whole cardiac cycle and a total of 400 independent RF measurements of 950 pulse echo lines were recorded.

The motion of the tissue surrounding the hepatic vein from superficial breathing had a peak velocity of 6.2±3.4 mm/s over the cardiac cycle, when averaged over the 10 volunteers. The motion due to the heart, when the volunteer was asked to hold his breath, gave a peak velocity of 4.2±1.7 mm/s. The movement of the carotid artery wall due to changing blood pressure had a peak velocity of 8.9±3.7 mm/s over the cardiac cycle.

The variations are due to differences in heart rhythm, breathing, and anatomy. All three of these motions are handled independently by the simulation program, which also includes a parametric model for the pulsatile velocity in the elastic vessel. The model can be used for optimizing both color flow mapping and spectral display systems