Complex Digital Filter Designs for Audio Processing in Doppler Ultrasound System

Abstract

A medical Doppler ultrasound system has a spectrum display that indicates the blood flow direction, whether the blood flows forward or away from a probe. It also has Doppler audio outputs. In particular, the latter is a special process peculiar to the Doppler ultrasound system and separates the blood flow direction and outputs from the left and right speakers. Owing to this function, the existence of a blood flow is quickly detectable. When changing conventional analog signal-processing into digital signal-processing, we researched many processing systems of Doppler audio. First, target performances, such as a response time and direction separation, were set up, and six kinds of digital signal-processing systems were examined. Further, we investigated some new anti-aliasing processing systems unique to Doppler ultrasound system. We compared three kinds of anti-aliasing processing systems. Consequently, we clarified that a complex IIR (infinite impulse response) filter system has an excellent response and a low calculation load.