Lm. Wang et Kk. Shung, CONTRAST-MEDIUM ASSISTED FLUID-FLOW MEASUREMENTS, IEEE transactions on ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control, 42(2), 1995, pp. 309-315
In this paper the development and evaluation of two new approaches for
ultrasound time-domain fluid flow measurements by tracking echoes sca
ttered by a contrast agent following injection of a bolus of the contr
ast agent are described. Their feasibility was investigated by measuri
ng velocity or velocity profile of blood flowing in a mock circulatory
loop in vitro. Measurements were made with a one transducer intravess
el approach and a two transducer extravessel approach. A hybrid cluste
r or vector cross-correlation method was used to track the motion of t
he scatterers in the two transducer time-domain method. This cluster o
r vector cross correlation method was developed to reduce the ambiguit
y resulted from misregistration which is a common problem in target tr
acking by correlating signal patterns. The experimental results show a
good agreement between the measured data and those estimated from tim
ing the volume. Although the discussions given in this paper pertain o
nly to blood flow measurements, there is no reason to indicate that th
ese approaches can not be used for fluid flow measurements in an indus
trial environment if suitable contrast agents can be developed.