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United States Patent | 5,123,416 |
Freeland | June 23, 1992 |
A blood pool imaging and analysis technique and apparatus uses ultrasound to examine areas of interest within the human body. The Doppler effect is used to determine the velocity of blood and tissue movement. Color flow imaging is used to display the moving blood pools and tissue by representing movement toward the transducer as one color, movement away from the transducer as a second color and movement which is outside of the sampling limits as a third color. Since the blood pool movement generally exceeds the rate at which the heart or organ walls move in creating the blood movement, the sampling limits can be adjusted so that the blood pool movement is outside of the limits. The resulting image of the blood pool movement, in the third color, can be used to calculate heart function parameters such as the ejection fraction.
Inventors: | Freeland; John C. (Boulder, CO) |
Assignee: | Prism Imaging, Inc. (Louisville, CO) |
Appl. No.: | 613318 |
Filed: | November 8, 1990 |
Intern'l Class: | A61B 008/00 |
Field of Search: | 128/661.07,661.08,661.09,661.10,661.04,916 |
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4873985 | Oct., 1989 | Nakajima | 128/661. |
4896674 | Jan., 1990 | Seo | 128/661. |
4966150 | Oct., 1990 | Etienne et al. | 128/661. |
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