1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an ultrasonic diagnostic equipment and, more particularly, an ultrasonic diagnostic equipment for performing tissue Doppler imaging (TDI) in terms of ultrasonic-pulse Doppler technique.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, there has been an equipment recited in Patent Application Laid-open No. 6-114059 (entitled Ultrasonic Color Doppler Tomographic Equipment) as an ultrasonic diagnostic equipment for performing the tissue Doppler imaging. The ultrasonic diagnostic equipment is equipped with a mechanism which detects motion velocity of tissues of cardiac muscles and blood vessel walls using a low-pass filter in terms of the ultrasonic pulse Doppler technique, calculates a variety of physical quantity of motion based on the motion velocity, and displays the calculation results in color in an appropriate manner.
Color display of the calculation results may be carried out in various manners. In the above Laid-open Publication, two dimensional color display method has been disclosed. Blood flow imaging technique used in a color Doppler equipment which is established according to a principle common with the tissue Doppler imaging may be applied preferably to tone control in this color display.
In the foregoing blood flow imaging, images have been displayed in 32 tones (f.sub.r /32 per tone), as shown in FIG. 9 of the above Publication, for example, by changing luminance or hue of color within the range where a Doppler deviation frequency f.sub.d is "-f.sub.r /2 to f.sub.r /2" (where f.sub.r a repetitive frequency of the ultrasonic pulse signal). In other words, tones in color display ranging from red (yellow) to blue (light blue) have been set by assigning such a scale that has uniform change in tone against the velocity (Doppler deviation frequency) to the throughout velocity range of "-f.sub.r /2 to f.sub.r /2".
Meanwhile, tissue motion as well as blood flow has been able to be monitored by the above ultrasonic diagnostic equipment. However, tissue motion and blood flow have not been analyzed concurrently, but they have been displayed selectively. But it is evident that, if tissue motion and blood flow can be displayed concurrently and analyzed simultaneously, more detailed diagnosis would be enabled by the ultrasonic diagnostic equipment. In particular, in the case of diagnosis of cardiopathy by the ultrasonic diagnostic equipment, it would be understood that detailed condition of the heart may be observed and grasped and therefore more precise and correct diagnosis may be pronounced if blood flow, cardiac muscle, and wall of blood vessel may be displayed concurrently and thus analyzed simultaneously.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds