Efficiency of ultrasound color flow imaging in the presence of twinkling artifact

Traditional blood flow mapping algorithms are not effective enough when the region of interest contains the sources of artifacts. This paper examines the signatures of blood flow signals, as well as noise and artifact signals. Mathematical rules are proposed on the basis of these features to discriminate the blood flow signal from other signals, including the Doppler twinkling artifact. The diagnostic efficiency of the proposed decision rules is assessed using the previously collected database of raw ultrasound Doppler signals. The study results showed that taking account of the spatial stability of blood flow velocity can increase diagnostic efficiency to 91.6%.