Automated Blood Volume Quantification from Color Doppler Images while Tracking the Conduit Motion

Previous studies have shown that the quantification of volumetric blood flow from a color Doppler image (CDI) is a feasible approach to eliminate technical obstacles in the traditional pulsed wave (PW) Doppler method. This paper introduces an automated method that computes the volumetric blood flow through a conduit while tracking the movement of blood flow. Correct calculation of the blood flow vector will reduce the conduit overestimation caused by the axis misalignment between the actual and estimated blood flow direction. This correction immediately contributes to the improvement of measurement accuracy. A clinical evaluation of the developed technique was executed on 21 healthy subjects and 10 patients. The proposed method generated better measurement results than the existing technique when the outcomes were compared with blood volumes measured by the PW-Doppler method.