High frame-rate estimation of two-dimensional blood flow vector by bidirectional doppler ultrasound with parallel beamforming

Ultrasonography has widely used as a simple and useful diagnostic tool in the clinical settings. The blood flow can be estimated with Doppler ultrasound. However, conventional ultrasound system can estimate only one-dimensional component along the ultrasound beam. In this study, the purpose is estimating blood flow vector includes two-dimension by using compounded two different one-dimensional components. Each components was obtained by bidirectional Doppler ultrasound with parallel beam forming using the same linear array probe⁽¹⁾. The frame-rate was increased by using parallel waves. Targets for measurement were carotid artery and a biantennary phantom. This work was implemented with a frame-rate of 100 Hz. We believe this method of estimating the true blood flow leads to early diagnosis of the diseases such as thrombus and plaque in the area of abnormal blood flow.