High resolution true velocity mapping with a 50 MHz pulsed wave Doppler system for dermatology

Besides morphological imaging blood flow imaging in the skin is of growing interest in dermatology. However, high resolution and sensitive detection techniques have to be applied in order to account for the small vessel diameters and the low flow velocities in the microcirculatory system of the skin. We propose a method for true velocity mapping with high spatial and high velocity resolution to consider the complex vessel structure with different flow directions. With our approach we combine a high resolution strategy for the estimation of the axial velocity and a procedure for transversal flow detection based on the weighting of the echo signal by the point spread function (PSF) of the imaging system are combined. Results from simulations and flow phantom measurements are presented