Isomorphism between pulsed-wave Doppler ultrasound and direction-of-arrival estimation. II. Experimental results

For pt. I see ibid., vol. 43, no. 5, p. 911-22 (1996). Pt. I presented the basic principles for applying high-resolution wide-band direction-of-arrival estimation techniques to pulsed-wave Doppler ultrasound. Such techniques provide high-resolution velocity profiles and enable the identification of multiple velocity components inside a sample volume. Another important application is the identification and rejection of wall clutter signals. A first and essential step in applying these techniques is to convert the wide-band echoes to narrow band. The 2D DFT projection method is used for this conversion. Two different narrow-band high-resolution methods are then applied to estimate the velocity distributions; the minimum variance (MV) and the multiple signal classification (MUSIC). Experimental results are presented to illustrate the potentials and limitations of applying wide-band DOA methods to different applications in pulsed-wave Doppler ultrasound.