Blood speed imaging with an intraluminal array

In applications in which Doppler processing is not possible, such as side-l ooking intravascular imaging systems, decorrelation methods can be used to estimate blood speed. Here, a method is presented measuring relative blood speed using an FIR filter bank to estimate temporal decorrelation rates. It can be implemented in a modern commercially available ultrasound imaging s ystem with no additional hardware. Both simulations and experiments using a n intraluminal scanner appropriate for coronary artery applications have te sted the system, In this study, the FIR filter bank is contrasted with prev ious methods, and its utility is further demonstrated with real-time color flow images from a pig model.