High-frame-rate contrast echocardiography using diverging waves: initial in-vitro and in-vivo evaluation
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Published version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Contrast Echocardiography (CE) ultrasound with microbubble contrast agents (UCA) has significantly advanced our capability for assessment of cardiac function, including myocardium perfusion quantification. However in standard CE techniques obtained with line by line scanning, the frame rate and image quality are limited. Recent research has shown significant frame rate improvement in non-contrast cardiac imaging. In this work we present and initially evaluate, both in-vitro and in-vivo, a high frame rate (HFR) CE imaging system using diverging waves and pulse inversion sequence. An imaging frame rate of 5500 frames per second before and 250 frames per second after compounding is achieved. A destruction-replenishment sequence has also been developed. The developed HFR CE is compared with standard CE in-vitro on a phantom and then in-vivo on a sheep heart. The image signal to noise ratio, contrast between the myocardium and the chamber are evaluated. Results show up to 13.4 dB improvement in contrast for HFR CE over standard CE when compared at the same display frame-rate even when the average spatial acoustic pressure in HFR CE is 36% lower than the standard CE. It is also found that when coherent compounding is used the HFR CE image intensity can be significantly modulated by the flow motion in the chamber.
Date Issued
2018-12
Date Acceptance
2018-07-12
Citation
IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics and Frequency Control, 2018, 65 (12), pp.2212-2221
ISSN
0885-3010
Publisher
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Start Page
2212
End Page
2221
Journal / Book Title
IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics and Frequency Control
Volume
65
Issue
12
Copyright Statement
© 2018 The Author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. For more information, see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/.
Sponsor
Engineering & Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC)
Identifier
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8412216
Grant Number
EP/M011933/1
Subjects
Science & Technology
Technology
Acoustics
Engineering, Electrical & Electronic
Engineering
Contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) imaging
high-frame-rate echocardiography
in vivo
myocardium perfusion
ultrafast diverging beams
BLOOD-FLOW DYNAMICS
PLANE-WAVE
ULTRASOUND
DOPPLER
QUANTIFICATION
VISUALIZATION
MICROBUBBLES
SPECKLE
MOTION
Acoustics
02 Physical Sciences
09 Engineering
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2018-07-17