Abstract
In 3D ultrasound color Doppler imaging (CDI), similar to 2D CDI, 8-12 pulse transmissions (ensembles, E) per each scanline are used for clutter rejection and flow estimation, leading to a low volume acquisition rate. This rate could be improved by using a small number of ensembles (e.g., E=4). However, the impact of the use of a small ensemble size on clutter rejection and flow estimation must be investigated. In this paper, we have evaluated three flow estimation methods: autoregression (AR), eigendecomposition (ED), and autocorrelation (AC) for a small size ensemble (E=4). To compare the performance of three methods, raw radio-frequency (RF) data were acquired from the Doppler flow phantom (RMI-1425A, Gammex Inc., USA) by using a commercial ultrasound machine (Accuvix V10, Medison Corp., Korea) equipped with a research package. From the phantom experiment, the AR estimator exhibited a significant improvement in area under receive operating characteristic curves compared to AC and ED methods (i.e., 0.97 ± 0.02 vs. 0.86 ± 0.07 and 0.83 ± 0.05, respectively). There is no statistically significant difference between the AC and ED methods (p>;0.24). These results indicate that the AR estimator would be suitable for flow estimation in 3D CDI with a low ensemble size.
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