Department of Bioengineering, University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, Texas 75080, USA.
J Acoust Soc Am. 2019 Oct;146(4):2466. doi: 10.1121/1.5129115.
A contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) imaging approach, termed pulse inversion spectral deconvolution (PISD), is introduced. The approach uses two Gaussian-weighted Hermite polynomials to form two inverted pulse sequences. The two inversed pulses are then used to filter ultrasound (US) backscattered data and discrimination of the linear and nonlinear signal components. A research US scanner equipped with a linear array transducer was used for data acquisition. The receive data from all channels are shaped using plane wave imaging beamforming with angular compounding (from one to nine angles). In vitro data was collected with a tissue mimicking flow phantom perfused with an US contrast agent using PISD and traditional nonlinear (NLI) US imaging as comparison. The role of imaging frequency (between 4.5 and 6.25 MHz) and mechanical index (from 0.1 to 0.3) were evaluated. Preliminary in vivo data was collected in the hindlimb of three healthy mice. Preliminary experimental findings indicate that the PISD contrast-to-tissue ratio was improved nearly ten times compared to the NLI US imaging approach. Also, the spatial resolution was improved due to the effect of deconvolution and spatial angular compounding. Overall, PISD is a promising postprocessing technique for real-time CEUS imaging.
引入了一种对比增强超声（CEUS）成像方法，称为脉冲反转谱解卷积（PISD）。该方法使用两个高斯加权的 Hermite 多项式形成两个反转脉冲序列。然后，这两个反转脉冲用于过滤超声（US）背向散射数据并区分线性和非线性信号分量。研究型 US 扫描仪配备了线性阵列换能器用于数据采集。接收的来自所有通道的数据使用平面波成像波束形成技术进行整形，具有角度复合（从一个到九个角度）。使用 PISD 和传统非线性（NLI）US 成像作为比较，在灌注 US 造影剂的组织模拟流动体模中收集体外数据。评估了成像频率（4.5 至 6.25 MHz 之间）和机械指数（0.1 至 0.3）的作用。初步在三只健康小鼠的后肢中收集了体内数据。初步实验结果表明，与 NLI US 成像方法相比，PISD 的对比组织比提高了近十倍。此外，由于解卷积和空间角度复合的作用，空间分辨率得到了提高。总体而言，PISD 是一种很有前途的实时 CEUS 成像后处理技术。
