NORWEGIAN UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (NTNU)
发明人:
TORP, HANS,HEGRUM, TORBJORN
申请号：
CA3090163
公开号：
CA3090163A1
申请日:
2019.02.07
申请国别(地区):
CA
年份:
2019
代理人:
摘要：
The invention provides a method of monitoring blood flow in a vertebrate animal subject. Unfocussed plane-wave ultrasound pulses are transmitted into the subject, along a transmission axis, from a single-element ultrasound transducer (2) fastened to the subject (5). Reflections of the ultrasound pulses are received, generating a succession of pulse-Doppler response signals over time. Each pulse-Doppler response signal is processed to determine a first respective spatial-maximum velocity value for blood flowing towards the single transducer element (2), and a second respective spatial-maximum velocity value for blood flowing away. Heartbeats are identified from said spatial-maximum velocity values and a quality metric is assigned to each identified heartbeat. A subset of the spatial-maximum velocity values is identified for which the assigned quality metric exceeds a threshold level. The values from the subset are monitored, and, when a set of values from the subset satisfies a predetermined alert criterion an audible or visual alert is signalled.
