PubMed Health⌕ Search

Biomedical subjects

A Herment

Publications and source records attributed to A Herment.

12 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1995

An adaptive approach to computing the spectrum and mean frequency of Doppler signals.

Modern ultrasound Doppler systems are facing the problem of processing increasingly shorter data sets. Spectral analysis of the strongly nonstationary Doppler signal needs to shorten the analysis window while maintaining a low variance and high resolution spectrum. Color flow imaging requires estimation of the Doppler mean frequency from even shorter Doppler data sets to obtain both a high frame rate and high spatial resolution. We reconsider these two estimation problems in light of adaptive methods. A regularized parametric method for spectral analysis as well as an adapted mean frequency estimator are developed. The choice of the adaptive criterion is then addressed and adaptive spectral and mean frequency estimators are developed to minimize the mean square error on estimation in the presence of noise. Two suboptimal spectral and mean-frequency estimators are then derived for real-time applications. Finally, their performance is compared to that of both the FFT based periodogram and the AR parametric spectral analysis for the spectral estimator, and, to both the correlation angle and the Kristoffersen's [8] estimators for the mean frequency estimator using Doppler data recorded in vitro.

Blood Flow Velocity↗
PubMed1992

Segmentation, modelling and reconstruction of arterial bifurcations in digital angiography.

The paper presents a method to model an arterial bifurcation from a pair of X-ray angiographic images. It is the initial step of a reconstruction process aiming at detecting and quantifying abnormal sites located on bifurcations. The method proposed consists of two steps. First, each image is independently segmented to extract the vessels in the images. The algorithm uses dynamic programming first to find the bifurcation centrelines from the original images, and secondly to extract vessel edges from the morphological gradient images, under a constraint of parallelism with the previously detected centrelines. Then, a three-dimensional bifurcation model is built by adapting cylinders around the three-dimensional bifurcation centrelines. These cylinders are obtained as a stack of binary orientable ellipses fitted to the projection densities in the corresponding cross-sections. Results obtained on simulated data, phantom and femoral bifurcations are displayed.

Angiography, Digital Subtraction↗
PubMed1991

Smoothed power spectrum estimate applied for analysis of the Doppler signal from blood flow.

A simple method for the improvement of the definition of the instantaneous spectrum estimate of Doppler signal is proposed. A short review of the stochastical properties of FFT spectrum estimates is presented. This review allowed us to develop a concept of the 'estimation noise' as an interpretation of the stochastic uncertainty of the estimation. This, in turn, permitted us to propose a method of adaptive filtering of spectral estimation to minimise the effects of the 'estimation noise'. Proposed filtering in the frequency domain corresponds to a procedure known as smoothing of the estimate. Two different smoothing procedures are presented: classical, linear smoothing and nonlinear, homomorphic smoothing. The performances of the smoothed spectrum estimate are theoretically and experimentally studied, showing that their effectiveness depends mostly on the shape of the Doppler spectrum. Although smoothing always reduces the spectral resolution, the important limitation of the variance of estimation can be achieved without meaningful deterioration of the resolution in our application. Thus, the proposed procedures may sensibly improve the accuracy of the relationship between the shape of the spectrum and the flow parameters. As a result, more exact determination of flow characteristics such as stability or maximum velocity, even in cases of low signal-to-noise power ratio, should be possible.

Algorithms↗
PubMed1991

Adaptive estimation of the mean frequency of a Doppler signal from short data windows.

The color Doppler estimator (CE1), which is calculated from the phase of the first correlation lag of the Doppler signal, is compared to the general mean frequency estimator (CEn), which is based on a weighted summation of all the available correlation lags, for long and short Doppler data sets (typically 48 and 8 Doppler samples). A new estimator of the Doppler signal mean frequency is derived from the results of this study. It optimizes the compromise between the range of analyzable frequencies and the estimation variance for the characteristics of the Doppler signal. Demonstration is provided that the behavior of this estimator shifts from that of CE1 to that of CEn, according to the setting of a single parameter. An adaptive version of this estimator is implemented and applied to Doppler recordings. Applications can be contemplated for color Doppler imaging.

Algorithms↗
PubMed1991

Estimation of frequency-dependent attenuation based on parametric spectral analysis and correlation lags of the demodulated echo signal.

Two new methods for estimating frequency-dependent attenuation are proposed which improve the compromise between the estimation variance of this parameter and the analyzed tissue volume: 1) parametric spectral estimation of the demodulated signal, based on fast Kalman filtering (ARC), 2) implementation of a new mean frequency estimator derived from all the available autocorrelation lags (ACn) of the demodulated signal. Both methods are applied to simulated echo signals. The results are compared to those of other already existing estimators. Both ARC and ACn methods provide equivalent results and a better estimation of attenuation (accuracy ranging from 1.3 to 8%) than the previous methods do (accuracy ranging from 4 to 66%), for analysis windows ranging from 1.5 to 20 microseconds.

Ultrasonics↗
PubMed1989

High-resolution, reflection mode tomographic imaging. Part I: Principles and methods.

A general method for improving image resolution is derived and applied to ultrasound signals; it combines the principles of both reflection mode tomography and deconvolution. The different possibilities of applying these principles allow two types of approaches to be defined, depending upon whether image reconstruction is achieved on radiofrequency or detected signals. A thorough description of three methods that are of particular interest due to their lower computation costs is presented, and their results quantified. They permit a gain in resolution of the order of ten with respect to two-dimensional deconvolution of images, as well as an improvement of the S/N ratio, which is related to the square root of the number of projections used in the reconstruction process, and a decrease of about four in computation time.

Humans↗
PubMed1989

High-resolution, reflection mode tomographic imaging. Part II: Application to echography.

Principles of high-resolution, ultrasonic imaging using data acquisition by a compound scanning with a sector echograph are presented. The signal processing is based on both deconvolution and reflection mode tomography. Three of the methods that can be derived from these principles are selected due to their lower computation costs. Applications of these methods to synthetic data and test targets demonstrate that, with respect to 2D deconvolution, they offer: a gain in computation time of more than 8, an improvement in resolution of the order of 10 and an increase of S/N ratio of the order of 4. Finally, both the effects of limited acquisition angular window and of a variable propagation speed are illustrated.

Humans↗
PubMed1987

Limitations of ultrasound imaging and image restoration.

The definition of medical ultrasound images is strongly limited by the need for low examination frequencies which is imposed by the high attenuation of acoustic waves in tissues. The filtering effect of imaging systems is described and quantified for echography, transmission tomography and reflection tomography. Improvement of image definition is demonstrated to be the result of a numerical restoration of the received echoes implemented, in the present case, by a simplified Kalman filter. The improvement in definition obtained is emphasized on simulated data and tissue images. The comparison between the results obtained from the three techniques shows that: if only echography provides a real-time acquisition of signals, tomographic methods lead to faster processing associated with a better signal-to-noise ratio on the reconstructed images, and reflection tomography offers the best definition.

Animals↗
PubMed1984

Range resolution improvement by a fast deconvolution method.

Range resolution improvement in ultrasonic echography is considered as an estimation problem which is solved using a new fast minimum variance deconvolution algorithm specially designed for a microprocessor-based on-line processing. This method is used to accurately study the lenses and fundus of the eye and to follow variations of an arterial wall thickness during the cardiac cycle.

Animals↗
PubMed1983

Estimation of blood-flow quality by statistical analysis or an ultrasonic Doppler signal: application to the study of perturbations caused by a vascular stenosis.

The noninvasive detection of pathological stenoses by Doppler ultrasound velocimetry is based on the appearance of modifications in velocity waveform or of a local increase in velocity. Nevertheless, these methods suffer from a lack of sensitivity. An extension of ultrasonic velocimetry including a statistical treatment of the Doppler signals affords a quantitative approach to the flow quality and seems to be able to improve the diagnosis of vascular obliterans. Accordingly a perturbation index can be computed on a microprocessor as the relative standard deviation of the zero-crossings histogram of the Doppler signal. A theoretical and experimental approach has been attempted to validate this method. Moreover, this index has been tested in vitro on calibrated flows. The in vivo experiments, performed on the abdominal aorta of the dog with artificial stenoses (0 to 50% in diameter) show a significant increase in the index value downstream from the stenosis. The relative increase of the index is greater than that of velocities for the same degree of obstruction. At the moment, it is possible to detect stenoses of 20% and above. It should be noted that changes in the perturbation index can be observed on a large part of the arterial segment, in relation with the severity of teh stenosis. Taking into account the increase in the index value and the length of the disturbed zone downstream of the stenosis, an estimation of the severity itself can be attempted. Clinical applications are in progress pointing out the diagnostic and prognostic abilities of the index method. The index perturbation method adds to velocity measurement the possibility of blood flow stability estimation. It appears useful for the localisation of stenoses, offers the possibility of quantifying their severity and could help the prognosis of their development.

Animals↗