Flowline tracking Doppler

Transit-time broadening in regions with high blood velocities limits the reproducibility of measurements from Pulsed Wave (PW) Doppler, which is a standard diagnostic tool in several cardiovascular applications. 2-D tracking Doppler, a previously introduced spectral estimator, can reduce transit time broadening by following the blood scatterers along straight trajectories. However, this method is expected to provide limited benefits in case of curved flow trajectories. In this work, we extended the 2-D tracking Doppler spectral estimator to track along arbitrarily shaped trajectories. Results from simulations showed that the extended implementation, named flowline tracking Doppler, delivers sonograms with improved velocity resolution compared to the previous implementation in case of curved flow trajectories. Results were confirmed using in vitro recordings.