Volume flow estimation of blood flow using speckle tracking

Abstract

A simulation of a carotid artery with no tilt and an artery with a 20 degrees tilt is performed in order to test the performance of a multi-dimensional flow velocity estimation technique based on speckle tracking. The results from the speckle tracking algorithm are compared to the ground truth data. There have been performed speckle tracking on the unfiltered simulation data, and on the data filtered with two clutter filters with different filter characterization. From the resulting speckle track data the velocity profiles at different time steps along one cardiac cycle have been estimated and plotted, to be compared with the corresponding plot for the ground truth velocity estimations. Three different grids in the artery have been analyzed, grids in the common, external and internal carotid artery. The volume flow has been estimated over one cardiac cycle based on the velocity estimations from the speckle tracking and the ground truth, using two different ways of finding the mean velocity. All the computations are done in MATLAB.Assuming an adequate anti-clutter filter or a sufficient beam-to-flow angle, this study indicates that speckle tracking can give a relative good volume flow estimastion of the blood flow. Overcoming the limitations of conventional flow imaging, which can only measure the velocity along the ultrasound beam. Future work could be similar stuides for in vitro and in vivo experiments.