Center for Fast Ultrasound Imaging

Center for Fast Ultrasound Imaging is a collaboration between the
Department of Information Technology at the Technical University
of Denmark, Herlev University Hospital, Gentofte University Hospital, the
manufacturer B&K Ultrasound Systems A/S, and the consulting company
I/O Consulting A/S. The center will investigate methods for making fast
ultrasound images using parallel beam forming and coded signals and using
these techniques for creating better flow images using adaptive signal
processing. The various techniques will be tested clinically during
the centers four years of existence from January 1, 1998 to
December 31, 2001.
The purpose of the center is to devise and implement new methods for
performing ultrasound imaging for visualizing the anatomy and the human
blood flow and to evaluate the methods clinically. Current ultrasound
systems use a single short pulse and sequential scanning in the different
imaging directions to obtain an image. This limits the number of images per
second, the attainable signal-to-noise ratio, and the resolution, thus
implicating the attainable image quality. Much can be gained by using
modern digital signal processing in combination with advanced ultrasound
pulsing and reconstruction. The main goal is to develop new scanning schemes
that make it possible to perform faster imaging with a better quality,
improve the accuracy and eliminate errors in current flow images, and
potentially expand the current possibilities into three dimensional
real time scanning. This opens the opportunity of three dimensional
flow imaging with a correct visualization of the velocity vectors in
e.g. the human heart.