New clutter rejection method using time-domain averaging for ultrasound color Doppler imaging

In ultrasound color Doppler imaging, effective rejection of clutter which is originated from surrounding tissues and slowly-moving vessel walls is important to improve the sensitivity in visualizing the blood flow. To adequately remove clutter, highpass filters, such as initialized infinite impulse response (IIR), are typically utilized. In this paper, we present a new clutter rejection method which can provide comparable clutter rejection to projection-initialized IIR filtering while significantly reducing hardware complexity for a low-cost handheld ultrasound system.