[Feature analysis for the envelope of liver's M-mode ultrasound images]

The liver moves in response to impulses arising from the main blood vessels. The hardness of the liver may be reflected by this kind of movement. The M-mode ultrasound technique is used in this paper to detect the information of livers' motion. The motion envelope of the liver excited by the abdominal aorta is extracted using the correlation technique. Several feature parameters, such as the amplitude, the standard deviation and Fourier harmonics, are extracted from this envelope. The values of parameters were calculated from 19 normal livers and 11 patients' livers, from which the criterion was obtained to decide whether the liver was normal.