High-Frame-Rate Ultrasound Color Flow Imaging Based on an Open Scanner

Standard scanned Color Flow Imaging (CFI) is a common blood flow visualization modality. Despite being introduced more than 30 years ago, this technique is still hampered by the conflicting requirements for either a good image quality or a high frame rate. In fact, good image qualities can only be obtained for frame rates between 10 and 20 Hz, which are unsuitable to show dynamically evolving events. This paper presents a high frame rate imaging modality that, once integrated with CFI, allows to overcome the above limitation. Results characterized by improved quality matched to the capability of properly tracking dynamically evolving flow rates are shown.