In vivo high frame rate vector flow imaging using plane waves and directional beamforming

Directional beamforming (DB) estimates blood flow velocities accurately when the flow angle is known. However, for automatically finding the flow angle a computationally expensive approach is used. This work presents a method for estimating the flow angle using a combination of inexpensive transverse oscillation (TO) estimators and only 3 directional beamformed lines. The suggested DB vector flow estimator is employed with steered plane wave transmissions for high frame rate imaging. Two distinct plane wave sequences are used: a short sequence (3 angles) for fast flow and an interleaved long sequence (21 angles) for both slow flow and B-mode. Parabolic flow with a peak velocity of 0.5 m/s is measured at beam-to-flow angles of 60° and 90°. The DB method estimates the angle with a bias and standard deviation (STD) less than 2°, and the STD of the velocity magnitude is 2.5 %. This is 7 - 8.5 % when using TO. The long sequence has a higher sensitivity, and when used for estimation of slow flow with a peak velocity of 0.04 m/s, the SD is 2.5 % and bias is 0.1 %. This is a factor of 4 better than if the short sequence is used. The carotid bifurcation was scanned on a healthy volunteer, and the short sequence was used with TO and DB to estimate velocity vectors. The STD of the velocity profile over a cardiac cycle was 6.1 % for TO and 4.9 % for DB.