Pub Date : 2025-01-08DOI: 10.1109/TUFFC.2024.3520761
{"title":"IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control Publication Information","authors":"","doi":"10.1109/TUFFC.2024.3520761","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/TUFFC.2024.3520761","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":13322,"journal":{"name":"IEEE transactions on ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control","volume":"71 12: Breaking the Resolution Barrier in Ultrasound","pages":"C2-C2"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2025-01-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=10834409","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142938170","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-12-11DOI: 10.1109/TUFFC.2024.3515218
Sajjad Afrakhteh;Giulia Tuccio;Libertario Demi
Ultrasound localization microscopy (ULM) has become a potent technique for microvascular imaging using ultrasound waves. However, one major challenge is the high frame rate and lengthy acquisition time needed to produce super-resolved (SR) images. To overcome this, our goal is to relax the frame rate and shorten this acquisition time while preserving SR image quality, thereby enhancing ULM’s clinical applicability. To this end, we propose two distinct strategies: first, we suggest acquiring the data at lower frame rate followed by applying the reconstruction technique to compensate the lost information due to low frame rate imaging. Second, to tackle the prolonged acquisition time, we propose compressing acquisition time by a compression ratio (CR), which can degrade SR image quality due to reduced temporal information. To mitigate this, we temporally upsample the in-phase-quadrature (IQ) data by a factor equal to the CR after compressed acquisition. In addition, we introduce a novel bidirectional (2x2D) interpolation (IP) using radial basis function (RBF)-based reconstruction to estimate unknown values in the 3D IQ data (x–z–t), thereby enhancing temporal resolution. The rationale behind using 2x2D IP is its ability to integrate spatiotemporal information from two orthogonal x–t and z–t planes, effectively addressing anisotropies and nonuniformities in microbubble motion. This 2x2D approach improves the reconstruction of microbubbles’ dynamics by interpolating along both the x- and z-directions. The method was tested on rat brain and rat kidney datasets recorded at 1 kHz, demonstrating relaxing the frame rate to 100 Hz (using the first strategy) and a reduction in acquisition time by a factor of 3 to 4 (using the second strategy) while maintaining SR image quality comparable to the original uncompressed data, including density and velocity maps.
{"title":"A Novel 2x2D Radial Basis Function-Based Interpolation for Short Acquisition Time and Relaxed Frame Rate Ultrasound Localization Microscopy","authors":"Sajjad Afrakhteh;Giulia Tuccio;Libertario Demi","doi":"10.1109/TUFFC.2024.3515218","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/TUFFC.2024.3515218","url":null,"abstract":"Ultrasound localization microscopy (ULM) has become a potent technique for microvascular imaging using ultrasound waves. However, one major challenge is the high frame rate and lengthy acquisition time needed to produce super-resolved (SR) images. To overcome this, our goal is to relax the frame rate and shorten this acquisition time while preserving SR image quality, thereby enhancing ULM’s clinical applicability. To this end, we propose two distinct strategies: first, we suggest acquiring the data at lower frame rate followed by applying the reconstruction technique to compensate the lost information due to low frame rate imaging. Second, to tackle the prolonged acquisition time, we propose compressing acquisition time by a compression ratio (CR), which can degrade SR image quality due to reduced temporal information. To mitigate this, we temporally upsample the in-phase-quadrature (IQ) data by a factor equal to the CR after compressed acquisition. In addition, we introduce a novel bidirectional (2x2D) interpolation (IP) using radial basis function (RBF)-based reconstruction to estimate unknown values in the 3D IQ data (x–z–t), thereby enhancing temporal resolution. The rationale behind using 2x2D IP is its ability to integrate spatiotemporal information from two orthogonal x–t and z–t planes, effectively addressing anisotropies and nonuniformities in microbubble motion. This 2x2D approach improves the reconstruction of microbubbles’ dynamics by interpolating along both the x- and z-directions. The method was tested on rat brain and rat kidney datasets recorded at 1 kHz, demonstrating relaxing the frame rate to 100 Hz (using the first strategy) and a reduction in acquisition time by a factor of 3 to 4 (using the second strategy) while maintaining SR image quality comparable to the original uncompressed data, including density and velocity maps.","PeriodicalId":13322,"journal":{"name":"IEEE transactions on ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control","volume":"71 12: Breaking the Resolution Barrier in Ultrasound","pages":"1855-1867"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2024-12-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=10793238","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142938380","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-11-27DOI: 10.1109/TUFFC.2024.3499555
{"title":"IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control Publication Information","authors":"","doi":"10.1109/TUFFC.2024.3499555","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/TUFFC.2024.3499555","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":13322,"journal":{"name":"IEEE transactions on ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control","volume":"71 11","pages":"C2-C2"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2024-11-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=10770107","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142736595","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Angiogenesis—the formation of new blood vessels from pre-existing ones—is one of the hallmarks of cancer, regardless of subtype. However, the development of a specific tumor type is a highly heterogeneous process that influences the morphology of the tumor vasculature, which has a direct impact on the malignancy and invasiveness of the lesions. Therefore, the analysis of tumor vascularity without the need for invasive procedures is of fundamental interest for the classification of tumor tissue and the monitoring of therapies. Ultrasound localization microscopy (ULM) is a promising new technique that breaks the resolution limits of conventional ultrasound (US) imaging and allows to detect vascular structures and blood flow down to the capillary level. In this article, we discuss this emerging technique in the context of cancer imaging, focusing on crucial implementation aspects as well as on initial basic research in preclinical and clinical settings.
{"title":"Ultrasound Localization Microscopy for Cancer Imaging","authors":"Céline Porte;Stefanie Dencks;Matthias Kohlen;Zuzanna Magnuska;Thomas Lisson;Anne Rix;Elmar Stickeler;Georg Schmitz;Fabian Kiessling","doi":"10.1109/TUFFC.2024.3508266","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/TUFFC.2024.3508266","url":null,"abstract":"Angiogenesis—the formation of new blood vessels from pre-existing ones—is one of the hallmarks of cancer, regardless of subtype. However, the development of a specific tumor type is a highly heterogeneous process that influences the morphology of the tumor vasculature, which has a direct impact on the malignancy and invasiveness of the lesions. Therefore, the analysis of tumor vascularity without the need for invasive procedures is of fundamental interest for the classification of tumor tissue and the monitoring of therapies. Ultrasound localization microscopy (ULM) is a promising new technique that breaks the resolution limits of conventional ultrasound (US) imaging and allows to detect vascular structures and blood flow down to the capillary level. In this article, we discuss this emerging technique in the context of cancer imaging, focusing on crucial implementation aspects as well as on initial basic research in preclinical and clinical settings.","PeriodicalId":13322,"journal":{"name":"IEEE transactions on ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control","volume":"71 12: Breaking the Resolution Barrier in Ultrasound","pages":"1785-1800"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2024-11-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142938038","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-11-12DOI: 10.1109/TUFFC.2024.3496474
Sergei Vostrikov, Josquin Tille, Luca Benini, Andrea Cossettini
The need for continuous monitoring of cardiorespiratory activity, blood pressure, bladder, muscle motion analysis, and more, is pushing for research and development of wearable ultrasound devices. In this context, there is a critical need for highly configurable, energy-efficient wearable ultrasound systems with wireless access to raw data and long battery life. Previous exploratory works have primarily relied on bulky commercial research systems or custom-built prototypes with limited and narrowly-focused field applicability. This paper presents TINYPROBE, a novel multi-modal wearable ultrasound platform. TINYPROBE integrates a 32-channel ultrasound RX/TX frontend, including TX beamforming (64 Vpp excitations, 16 delay profiles) and analog-to-digital conversion (up to 30 Msps, 10 bit), with a WiFi link (21.6 Mbps, UDP), for wireless raw data access, all in a compact (57 × 35 × 20 mm) and lightweight (35 g) design. Employing advanced power-saving techniques and optimized electronics design, TINYPROBE achieves a power consumption of < 1W for imaging modes (32 ch., 33 Hz) and < 1.3W for high-PRF Doppler mode (2 ch., 1400 Hz). This results in a state-of-the-art power efficiency of 44.9 mW/Mbps for wireless US systems, ensuring multi-hour operation with a compact 500 mAh Li-Po battery. We validate TINYPROBE as a versatile, general-purpose wearable platform in multiple in-vivo imaging scenarios, including muscle and bladder imaging, and blood flow velocity measurements.
{"title":"TinyProbe: A Wearable 32-channel Multi-Modal Wireless Ultrasound Probe.","authors":"Sergei Vostrikov, Josquin Tille, Luca Benini, Andrea Cossettini","doi":"10.1109/TUFFC.2024.3496474","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/TUFFC.2024.3496474","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The need for continuous monitoring of cardiorespiratory activity, blood pressure, bladder, muscle motion analysis, and more, is pushing for research and development of wearable ultrasound devices. In this context, there is a critical need for highly configurable, energy-efficient wearable ultrasound systems with wireless access to raw data and long battery life. Previous exploratory works have primarily relied on bulky commercial research systems or custom-built prototypes with limited and narrowly-focused field applicability. This paper presents TINYPROBE, a novel multi-modal wearable ultrasound platform. TINYPROBE integrates a 32-channel ultrasound RX/TX frontend, including TX beamforming (64 V<sub>pp</sub> excitations, 16 delay profiles) and analog-to-digital conversion (up to 30 Msps, 10 bit), with a WiFi link (21.6 Mbps, UDP), for wireless raw data access, all in a compact (57 × 35 × 20 mm) and lightweight (35 g) design. Employing advanced power-saving techniques and optimized electronics design, TINYPROBE achieves a power consumption of < 1W for imaging modes (32 ch., 33 Hz) and < 1.3W for high-PRF Doppler mode (2 ch., 1400 Hz). This results in a state-of-the-art power efficiency of 44.9 mW/Mbps for wireless US systems, ensuring multi-hour operation with a compact 500 mAh Li-Po battery. We validate TINYPROBE as a versatile, general-purpose wearable platform in multiple in-vivo imaging scenarios, including muscle and bladder imaging, and blood flow velocity measurements.</p>","PeriodicalId":13322,"journal":{"name":"IEEE transactions on ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control","volume":"PP ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2024-11-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142619305","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-11-08DOI: 10.1109/TUFFC.2024.3494019
Chunjie Shan;Yidan Zhang;Chunrui Liu;Zhibin Jin;Hanlin Cheng;Yidi Chen;Jing Yao;Shouhua Luo
Carotid atherosclerotic plaques are a major complication associated with type II diabetes, and carotid ultrasound is commonly used for diagnosing carotid vascular disease. In primary hospitals, less experienced ultrasound physicians often struggle to consistently capture standard carotid images and identify plaques. To address this issue, we propose a novel approach, the long-short memory-based detection (LSMD) network, for carotid artery detection in ultrasound video streams, facilitating the identification and localization of critical anatomical structures and plaques. This approach models short- and long-distance spatiotemporal features through short-term temporal aggregation (STA) and long-term temporal aggregation (LTA) modules, effectively expanding the temporal receptive field with minimal delay and enhancing the detection efficiency of carotid anatomy and plaques. Specifically, we introduce memory buffers with a dynamic updating strategy to ensure extensive temporal receptive field coverage while minimizing memory and computation costs. The proposed model was trained on 80 carotid ultrasound videos and evaluated on 50, with all videos annotated by physicians for carotid anatomies and plaques. The trained LSMD was evaluated for performance on the validation and test sets using the single-frame image-based single shot multibox detector (SSD) algorithm as a baseline. The results show that the precision, recall, average precision (AP) at $text {IoU}={0.50}$ ( $text {AP}_{{50}}$ ), and mean AP (mAP) are 6.83%, 12.29%, 11.23%, and 13.21% higher than the baseline ( ${p}lt {0.001}$ ), respectively, while the model’s inference latency reaches 6.97 ms on a desktop-level GPU (NVIDIA RTX 3090Ti) and 29.69 ms on an edge computing device (Jetson Orin Nano). These findings demonstrate that LSMD can accurately localize carotid anatomy and plaques with real-time inference, indicating its potential for enhancing diagnostic accuracy in clinical practice.
颈动脉粥样硬化斑块是 II 型糖尿病的主要并发症，颈动脉超声通常用于诊断颈动脉血管疾病。在基层医院，经验较少的超声医生往往难以持续捕捉标准颈动脉图像并识别斑块。为解决这一问题，我们提出了一种新方法--基于长短记忆的检测网络（LSMD），用于超声视频流中的颈动脉检测，促进关键解剖结构和斑块的识别和定位。这种方法通过短期时空聚合（STA）和长期时空聚合（LTA）模块对短距离和长距离时空特征进行建模，以最小的延迟有效扩展时空感受野，提高颈动脉解剖结构和斑块的检测效率。具体来说，我们引入了具有动态更新策略的内存缓冲区，以确保广泛的时间感受野覆盖，同时最大限度地降低内存和计算成本。我们在 80 个颈动脉超声视频上对所提出的模型进行了训练，并在 50 个视频上进行了评估，所有视频都由医生对颈动脉解剖结构和斑块进行了注释。以基于单帧图像的单枪多箱检测器（SSD）算法为基准，对训练好的 LSMD 在验证集和测试集上的性能进行了评估。结果显示，精确度、召回率、IoU = 0.50时的平均精确度（AP50）和平均平均精确度（mAP）分别比基线高出6.83%、12.29%、11.23%和13.21%（p < 0.001），而模型的推理延迟在桌面级GPU（英伟达RTX 3090Ti）上为6.97ms，在边缘计算设备（Jetson Orin Nano）上为29.69ms。这些研究结果表明，LSMD 可以通过实时推理准确定位颈动脉解剖结构和斑块，显示了其在临床实践中提高诊断准确性的潜力。
{"title":"LSMD: Long-Short Memory-Based Detection Network for Carotid Artery Detection in B-Mode Ultrasound Video Streams","authors":"Chunjie Shan;Yidan Zhang;Chunrui Liu;Zhibin Jin;Hanlin Cheng;Yidi Chen;Jing Yao;Shouhua Luo","doi":"10.1109/TUFFC.2024.3494019","DOIUrl":"10.1109/TUFFC.2024.3494019","url":null,"abstract":"Carotid atherosclerotic plaques are a major complication associated with type II diabetes, and carotid ultrasound is commonly used for diagnosing carotid vascular disease. In primary hospitals, less experienced ultrasound physicians often struggle to consistently capture standard carotid images and identify plaques. To address this issue, we propose a novel approach, the long-short memory-based detection (LSMD) network, for carotid artery detection in ultrasound video streams, facilitating the identification and localization of critical anatomical structures and plaques. This approach models short- and long-distance spatiotemporal features through short-term temporal aggregation (STA) and long-term temporal aggregation (LTA) modules, effectively expanding the temporal receptive field with minimal delay and enhancing the detection efficiency of carotid anatomy and plaques. Specifically, we introduce memory buffers with a dynamic updating strategy to ensure extensive temporal receptive field coverage while minimizing memory and computation costs. The proposed model was trained on 80 carotid ultrasound videos and evaluated on 50, with all videos annotated by physicians for carotid anatomies and plaques. The trained LSMD was evaluated for performance on the validation and test sets using the single-frame image-based single shot multibox detector (SSD) algorithm as a baseline. The results show that the precision, recall, average precision (AP) at \u0000<inline-formula> <tex-math>$text {IoU}={0.50}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>\u0000 (\u0000<inline-formula> <tex-math>$text {AP}_{{50}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>\u0000), and mean AP (mAP) are 6.83%, 12.29%, 11.23%, and 13.21% higher than the baseline (\u0000<inline-formula> <tex-math>${p}lt {0.001}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>\u0000), respectively, while the model’s inference latency reaches 6.97 ms on a desktop-level GPU (NVIDIA RTX 3090Ti) and 29.69 ms on an edge computing device (Jetson Orin Nano). These findings demonstrate that LSMD can accurately localize carotid anatomy and plaques with real-time inference, indicating its potential for enhancing diagnostic accuracy in clinical practice.","PeriodicalId":13322,"journal":{"name":"IEEE transactions on ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control","volume":"71 11","pages":"1464-1477"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2024-11-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142604212","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-11-07DOI: 10.1109/TUFFC.2024.3493602
François Destrempes;Boris Chayer;Marie-Hélène Roy Cardinal;Louise Allard;Hassan Rivaz;Madeleine Durand;William Beaubien-Souligny;Martin Girard;Guy Cloutier
The ultrasound backscatter coefficient (BSC) is a frequency-dependent quantity intrinsic to biological tissues that can be recovered from backscattered radio frequency (RF) signals, granted acquisitions on a reference phantom (RP) are available under the same system’s settings. A phantom-free (PF) BSC estimation method is proposed based on Gaussian-shaped approximation of the point spread function (PSF) (electronics and piezoelectric characteristics of the scanner’s probe) and the effective medium theory combined with the structure factor model (EMTSFM), albeit the proposed approach is amenable to other models. Meanwhile, the total attenuation due to intervening tissues is refined from its theoretical value, which is based on reported average behaviors of tissues, while allowing correction for diffraction due to the probe’s geometry. The RP method adapted to a similar approach except for the Gaussian approximation is also presented. The proposed PF and RP methods were compared on ten COVID-19 positive patients and 12 control subjects with measures on femoral veins and arteries. In this context, red blood cells (RBCs) are viewed as scatterers that form aggregates increasing the backscatter under the COVID-19 inflammatory condition. The considered model comprises five parameters, including the mean aggregate size estimated according to the polydispersity of aggregates’ radii, and anisotropy of their shape. The mean aggregate size over the two proposed methods presented an intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) of 0.964 for consistency. The aggregate size presented a significant difference between the two groups with either two methods, despite the confounding effect of the maximum Doppler velocity within the blood vessel and its diameter.
{"title":"A Phantom-Free Approach for Estimating the Backscatter Coefficient of Aggregated Red Blood Cells Applied to COVID-19 Patients","authors":"François Destrempes;Boris Chayer;Marie-Hélène Roy Cardinal;Louise Allard;Hassan Rivaz;Madeleine Durand;William Beaubien-Souligny;Martin Girard;Guy Cloutier","doi":"10.1109/TUFFC.2024.3493602","DOIUrl":"10.1109/TUFFC.2024.3493602","url":null,"abstract":"The ultrasound backscatter coefficient (BSC) is a frequency-dependent quantity intrinsic to biological tissues that can be recovered from backscattered radio frequency (RF) signals, granted acquisitions on a reference phantom (RP) are available under the same system’s settings. A phantom-free (PF) BSC estimation method is proposed based on Gaussian-shaped approximation of the point spread function (PSF) (electronics and piezoelectric characteristics of the scanner’s probe) and the effective medium theory combined with the structure factor model (EMTSFM), albeit the proposed approach is amenable to other models. Meanwhile, the total attenuation due to intervening tissues is refined from its theoretical value, which is based on reported average behaviors of tissues, while allowing correction for diffraction due to the probe’s geometry. The RP method adapted to a similar approach except for the Gaussian approximation is also presented. The proposed PF and RP methods were compared on ten COVID-19 positive patients and 12 control subjects with measures on femoral veins and arteries. In this context, red blood cells (RBCs) are viewed as scatterers that form aggregates increasing the backscatter under the COVID-19 inflammatory condition. The considered model comprises five parameters, including the mean aggregate size estimated according to the polydispersity of aggregates’ radii, and anisotropy of their shape. The mean aggregate size over the two proposed methods presented an intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) of 0.964 for consistency. The aggregate size presented a significant difference between the two groups with either two methods, despite the confounding effect of the maximum Doppler velocity within the blood vessel and its diameter.","PeriodicalId":13322,"journal":{"name":"IEEE transactions on ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control","volume":"71 12: Breaking the Resolution Barrier in Ultrasound","pages":"1879-1896"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2024-11-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142604210","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Wearable ultrasound has been widely developed for long-term, continuous imaging without the need for bulky system manipulation and repeated manual locating. To potentially lead to more accurate and reliable imaging monitoring, this work presents the design, fabrication, and evaluation of a novel high-frequency wearable ultrasound array belt (WUAB) for small animal echocardiography. The fabrication process involved precise dicing technology for a $lambda$ -pitch design. The $20-mathrm{MHz}$ WUAB consists of two matching layers, a piezoelectric composite with 128 channels, a customized flexible circuit substrate, an acoustic backing layer, and a customized belt structure with designed end tip and insertion point for wearability. The resulting WUAB demonstrates the sensitivity of $-5.69 pm 2.5 mathrm{~dB}$ and the fractional bandwidth (BDW) of $57 % pm 5 %$ . In vivo experiments on rat model showed expected echocardiography and B-mode images of rat heart. These results represent significant promise for future longitudinal studies in small animals and real-time physiological monitoring.
{"title":"High-Frequency Wearable Ultrasound Array Belt for Small Animal Echocardiography","authors":"Yushun Zeng;Xin Sun;Junhang Zhang;Chi-Feng Chang;Baoqiang Liu;Chen Gong;Jie Ji;Bryan Zhen Zhang;Yujie Wang;Matthew Xinhu Ren;Robert Wodnicki;Hsiao-Chuan Liu;Qifa Zhou","doi":"10.1109/TUFFC.2024.3492197","DOIUrl":"10.1109/TUFFC.2024.3492197","url":null,"abstract":"Wearable ultrasound has been widely developed for long-term, continuous imaging without the need for bulky system manipulation and repeated manual locating. To potentially lead to more accurate and reliable imaging monitoring, this work presents the design, fabrication, and evaluation of a novel high-frequency wearable ultrasound array belt (WUAB) for small animal echocardiography. The fabrication process involved precise dicing technology for a \u0000<inline-formula> <tex-math>$lambda$ </tex-math></inline-formula>\u0000-pitch design. The \u0000<inline-formula> <tex-math>$20-mathrm{MHz}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>\u0000 WUAB consists of two matching layers, a piezoelectric composite with 128 channels, a customized flexible circuit substrate, an acoustic backing layer, and a customized belt structure with designed end tip and insertion point for wearability. The resulting WUAB demonstrates the sensitivity of \u0000<inline-formula> <tex-math>$-5.69 pm 2.5 mathrm{~dB}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>\u0000 and the fractional bandwidth (BDW) of \u0000<inline-formula> <tex-math>$57 % pm 5 %$ </tex-math></inline-formula>\u0000. In vivo experiments on rat model showed expected echocardiography and B-mode images of rat heart. These results represent significant promise for future longitudinal studies in small animals and real-time physiological monitoring.","PeriodicalId":13322,"journal":{"name":"IEEE transactions on ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control","volume":"71 12: Breaking the Resolution Barrier in Ultrasound","pages":"1915-1923"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2024-11-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142590767","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-10-31DOI: 10.1109/TUFFC.2024.3488729
Hengrong Lan;Lijie Huang;Yadan Wang;Rui Wang;Xingyue Wei;Qiong He;Jianwen Luo
Ultrasound microvascular imaging (UMI), including ultrafast power Doppler imaging (uPDI) and ultrasound localization microscopy (ULM), obtains blood flow information through plane wave (PW) transmissions at high frame rates. However, low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of PWs causes low image quality. Adaptive beamformers have been proposed to suppress noise energy to achieve higher image quality accompanied by increasing computational complexity. Deep learning (DL) leverages powerful hardware capabilities to enable rapid implementation of noise suppression at the cost of flexibility. To enhance the applicability of DL-based methods, in this work, we propose a deep power-aware tunable (DPT) weighting (i.e., postfilter) for delay-and-sum (DAS) beamforming to improve UMI by enhancing PW images. The model, called Yformer, is a hybrid structure combining convolution and Transformer. With the DAS beamformed and compounded envelope image as input, Yformer can estimate both noise power and signal power. Furthermore, we utilize the obtained powers to compute pixel-wise weights by introducing a tunable noise control factor (NCF), which is tailored for improving the quality of different UMI applications. In vivo experiments on the rat brain demonstrate that Yformer can accurately estimate the powers of noise and signal with the structural similarity index measure (SSIM) higher than 0.95. The performance of the DPT weighting is comparable to that of superior adaptive beamformer in uPDI with low computational cost. The DPT weighting was then applied to four different datasets of ULM, including public simulation, public rat brain, private rat brain, and private rat liver datasets, showing excellent generalizability using the model trained by the private rat brain dataset only. In particular, our method indirectly improves the resolution of liver ULM from 25.24 to $18.77~mu $ m by highlighting small vessels. In addition, the DPT weighting exhibits more details of blood vessels with faster processing, which has the potential to facilitate the clinical applications of high-quality UMI.
{"title":"Deep Power-Aware Tunable Weighting for Ultrasound Microvascular Imaging","authors":"Hengrong Lan;Lijie Huang;Yadan Wang;Rui Wang;Xingyue Wei;Qiong He;Jianwen Luo","doi":"10.1109/TUFFC.2024.3488729","DOIUrl":"10.1109/TUFFC.2024.3488729","url":null,"abstract":"Ultrasound microvascular imaging (UMI), including ultrafast power Doppler imaging (uPDI) and ultrasound localization microscopy (ULM), obtains blood flow information through plane wave (PW) transmissions at high frame rates. However, low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of PWs causes low image quality. Adaptive beamformers have been proposed to suppress noise energy to achieve higher image quality accompanied by increasing computational complexity. Deep learning (DL) leverages powerful hardware capabilities to enable rapid implementation of noise suppression at the cost of flexibility. To enhance the applicability of DL-based methods, in this work, we propose a deep power-aware tunable (DPT) weighting (i.e., postfilter) for delay-and-sum (DAS) beamforming to improve UMI by enhancing PW images. The model, called Yformer, is a hybrid structure combining convolution and Transformer. With the DAS beamformed and compounded envelope image as input, Yformer can estimate both noise power and signal power. Furthermore, we utilize the obtained powers to compute pixel-wise weights by introducing a tunable noise control factor (NCF), which is tailored for improving the quality of different UMI applications. In vivo experiments on the rat brain demonstrate that Yformer can accurately estimate the powers of noise and signal with the structural similarity index measure (SSIM) higher than 0.95. The performance of the DPT weighting is comparable to that of superior adaptive beamformer in uPDI with low computational cost. The DPT weighting was then applied to four different datasets of ULM, including public simulation, public rat brain, private rat brain, and private rat liver datasets, showing excellent generalizability using the model trained by the private rat brain dataset only. In particular, our method indirectly improves the resolution of liver ULM from 25.24 to \u0000<inline-formula> <tex-math>$18.77~mu $ </tex-math></inline-formula>\u0000m by highlighting small vessels. In addition, the DPT weighting exhibits more details of blood vessels with faster processing, which has the potential to facilitate the clinical applications of high-quality UMI.","PeriodicalId":13322,"journal":{"name":"IEEE transactions on ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control","volume":"71 12: Breaking the Resolution Barrier in Ultrasound","pages":"1701-1713"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142557736","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-10-30DOI: 10.1109/TUFFC.2024.3484770
Jaime Parra Raad;Daniel Lock;Yi-Yi Liu;Mark Solomon;Laura Peralta;Kirsten Christensen-Jeffries
Super-resolution ultrasound (SRUS) visualizes microvasculature beyond the ultrasound (US) diffraction limit (wavelength( $lambda $ )/2) by localizing and tracking spatially isolated microbubble (MB) contrast agents. SRUS phantoms typically consist of simple tube structures, where diameter channels below ${100}~{mu }$ m are not available. Furthermore, these phantoms are generally fragile and unstable, have limited ground truth validation, and their simple structure limits the evaluation of SRUS algorithms. To aid SRUS development, robust and durable phantoms with known and physiologically relevant microvasculature are needed for repeatable SRUS testing. This work proposes a method to fabricate durable microvascular phantoms that allow optical gauging for SRUS validation. The methodology used a microvasculature negative print embedded in a Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) to fabricate a microvascular phantom. Branching microvascular phantoms with variable microvascular density were demonstrated with optically validated vessel diameters down to ${sim } 60~{mu }$ m ( $lambda text {/}{5.8}$ ; ${lambda ={sim }{350}}~{mu }$ m). SRUS imaging was performed and validated with optical measurements. The average SRUS error was ${15.61}~{mu }$ m ( $lambda text {/22}$ ) with a standard deviation error of ${11.44}~{mu }$ m. The average error decreased to ${7.93}~{mu }$ m ( $lambda text {/44}$ ) once the number of localized MBs surpassed 1000 per estimated diameter. In addition, less than 10% variance of acoustic and optical properties and the mechanical toughness of the phantoms measured a year after fabrication demonstrated their long-term durability. This work presents a method to fabricate durable and optically validated complex microvascular phantoms which can be used to quantify SRUS performance and facilitate its further development.
{"title":"Optically Validated Microvascular Phantom for Super-Resolution Ultrasound Imaging","authors":"Jaime Parra Raad;Daniel Lock;Yi-Yi Liu;Mark Solomon;Laura Peralta;Kirsten Christensen-Jeffries","doi":"10.1109/TUFFC.2024.3484770","DOIUrl":"10.1109/TUFFC.2024.3484770","url":null,"abstract":"Super-resolution ultrasound (SRUS) visualizes microvasculature beyond the ultrasound (US) diffraction limit (wavelength(\u0000<inline-formula> <tex-math>$lambda $ </tex-math></inline-formula>\u0000)/2) by localizing and tracking spatially isolated microbubble (MB) contrast agents. SRUS phantoms typically consist of simple tube structures, where diameter channels below \u0000<inline-formula> <tex-math>${100}~{mu }$ </tex-math></inline-formula>\u0000m are not available. Furthermore, these phantoms are generally fragile and unstable, have limited ground truth validation, and their simple structure limits the evaluation of SRUS algorithms. To aid SRUS development, robust and durable phantoms with known and physiologically relevant microvasculature are needed for repeatable SRUS testing. This work proposes a method to fabricate durable microvascular phantoms that allow optical gauging for SRUS validation. The methodology used a microvasculature negative print embedded in a Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) to fabricate a microvascular phantom. Branching microvascular phantoms with variable microvascular density were demonstrated with optically validated vessel diameters down to \u0000<inline-formula> <tex-math>${sim } 60~{mu }$ </tex-math></inline-formula>\u0000m (\u0000<inline-formula> <tex-math>$lambda text {/}{5.8}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>\u0000; \u0000<inline-formula> <tex-math>${lambda ={sim }{350}}~{mu }$ </tex-math></inline-formula>\u0000m). SRUS imaging was performed and validated with optical measurements. The average SRUS error was \u0000<inline-formula> <tex-math>${15.61}~{mu }$ </tex-math></inline-formula>\u0000m (\u0000<inline-formula> <tex-math>$lambda text {/22}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>\u0000) with a standard deviation error of \u0000<inline-formula> <tex-math>${11.44}~{mu }$ </tex-math></inline-formula>\u0000m. The average error decreased to \u0000<inline-formula> <tex-math>${7.93}~{mu }$ </tex-math></inline-formula>\u0000m (\u0000<inline-formula> <tex-math>$lambda text {/44}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>\u0000) once the number of localized MBs surpassed 1000 per estimated diameter. In addition, less than 10% variance of acoustic and optical properties and the mechanical toughness of the phantoms measured a year after fabrication demonstrated their long-term durability. This work presents a method to fabricate durable and optically validated complex microvascular phantoms which can be used to quantify SRUS performance and facilitate its further development.","PeriodicalId":13322,"journal":{"name":"IEEE transactions on ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control","volume":"71 12: Breaking the Resolution Barrier in Ultrasound","pages":"1833-1843"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142545196","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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