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Jiang L, Chu H, Yu J, Su X, Liu J, Wu H, Wang F, Zong Y, Wan M. Clutter filtering of angular domain data for contrast-free ultrafast microvascular imaging. Phys Med Biol 2023; 69:015006. [PMID: 38041871 DOI: 10.1088/1361-6560/ad11a2] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/07/2023] [Accepted: 12/01/2023] [Indexed: 12/04/2023]
Abstract
Objective. Contrast-free microvascular imaging is clinically valuable for the assessment of physiological status and the early diagnosis of diseases. Effective clutter filtering is essential for microvascular visualization without contrast enhancement. Singular value decomposition (SVD)-based spatiotemporal filter has been widely used to suppress clutter. However, clinical real-time imaging relies on short ensembles (dozens of frames), which limits the implementation of SVD filtering due to the large error of eigen-correlated estimations and high dependence on optimal threshold when used in such ensembles.Approach. To address the above challenges of imaging in short ensembles, two optimized filters of angular domain data are proposed in this paper: grouped angle SVD (GA-SVD) and angular-coherence-based higher-order SVD (AC-HOSVD). GA-SVD applies SVD to the concatenation of all angular data to improve clutter rejection performance in short ensembles, while AC-HOSVD applies HOSVD to the angular data tensor and utilizes angular coherence in addition to spatial and temporal features for filtering. Feasible threshold selection strategies in each feature space are provided. The clutter rejection performance of the proposed filters and SVD was evaluated with Doppler phantom andin vivostudies at different cases. Moreover, the robustness of the filters was explored under wrong singular value threshold estimation, and their computational complexity was studied.Main results. Qualitative and quantitative results indicated that GA-SVD and AC-HOSVD can effectively improve clutter rejection performance in short ensembles, especially AC-HOSVD. Notably, the proposed methods using 20 frames had similar image quality to SVD using 100 frames.In vivostudies showed that compared to SVD, GA-SVD increased the signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) by 6.03 dB on average, and AC-HOSVD increased the SNR by 8.93 dB on average. Furthermore, AC-HOSVD remained better power Doppler image quality under non-optimal thresholds, followed by GA-SVD.Significance. The proposed filters can greatly enhance contrast-free microvascular visualization in short ensembles and have potential for different clinical translations due to the performance differences.
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Affiliation(s)
- Liyuan Jiang
- The Key Laboratory of Biomedical Information Engineering of Ministry of Education, Department of Biomedical Engineering, School of Life Science and Technology, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, People's Republic of China
| | - Hanbing Chu
- The Key Laboratory of Biomedical Information Engineering of Ministry of Education, Department of Biomedical Engineering, School of Life Science and Technology, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, People's Republic of China
| | - Jianjun Yu
- The Key Laboratory of Biomedical Information Engineering of Ministry of Education, Department of Biomedical Engineering, School of Life Science and Technology, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, People's Republic of China
| | - Xiao Su
- The Key Laboratory of Biomedical Information Engineering of Ministry of Education, Department of Biomedical Engineering, School of Life Science and Technology, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, People's Republic of China
| | - Jiacheng Liu
- The Key Laboratory of Biomedical Information Engineering of Ministry of Education, Department of Biomedical Engineering, School of Life Science and Technology, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, People's Republic of China
| | - Haitao Wu
- The Key Laboratory of Biomedical Information Engineering of Ministry of Education, Department of Biomedical Engineering, School of Life Science and Technology, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, People's Republic of China
| | - Feiqian Wang
- Ultrasound Department, The First Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710061, People's Republic of China
| | - Yujin Zong
- The Key Laboratory of Biomedical Information Engineering of Ministry of Education, Department of Biomedical Engineering, School of Life Science and Technology, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, People's Republic of China
| | - Mingxi Wan
- The Key Laboratory of Biomedical Information Engineering of Ministry of Education, Department of Biomedical Engineering, School of Life Science and Technology, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, People's Republic of China
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Lacoin G, Zemmoura I, Gennisson JL, Kouamé D, Remenieras JP. Multi-layered adaptive neoangiogenesis Intra-Operative quantification (MANIOQ). J Cereb Blood Flow Metab 2023; 43:1557-1570. [PMID: 37070356 PMCID: PMC10414011 DOI: 10.1177/0271678x231170504] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/20/2022] [Revised: 03/20/2023] [Accepted: 03/28/2023] [Indexed: 04/19/2023]
Abstract
Quantification of vascularization volume can provide valuable information for diagnosis and prognosis in vascular pathologies. It can be adapted to inform the surgical management of gliomas, aggressive brain tumors characterized by exuberant sprouting of new blood vessels (neoangiogenesis). Filtered ultrafast Doppler data can provide two main parameters: vascularization index (VI) and fractional moving blood volume (FMBV) that clinically reflect tumor micro vascularization. Current protocols lack robust, automatic, and repeatable filtering methods. We present a filtrating method called Multi-layered Adaptive Neoangiogenesis Intra-Operative Quantification (MANIOQ). First, an adaptive clutter filtering is implemented, based on singular value decomposition (SVD) and hierarchical clustering. Second a method for noise equalization is applied, based on the subtraction of a weighted noise profile. Finally, an in vivo analysis of the periphery of the B-mode hyper signal area allows to measure the vascular infiltration extent of the brain tumors. Ninety ultrasound acquisitions were processed from 23 patients. Compared to reference methods in the literature, MANIOQ provides a more robust tissue filtering, and noise equalization allows for the first time to keep axial and lateral gain compensation (TGC and LGC). MANIOQ opens the way to an intra-operative clinical analysis of gliomas micro vascularization.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Ilyess Zemmoura
- UMR 1253, iBrain and the CHRU de Tours, Neurosurgical Department, Indre et Loire, Tours, France
| | - Jean-Luc Gennisson
- BioMaps, Laboratoire d'imagerie biomédicale multimodale à Paris-Saclay, Université Paris-Saclay, CEA, CNRS, INSERM, France
| | - Denis Kouamé
- Université de Toulouse III, IRIT UMR CNRS 5505, Toulouse, France
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Adusei S, Ternifi R, Fatemi M, Alizad A. Custom-made flow phantoms for quantitative ultrasound microvessel imaging. ULTRASONICS 2023; 134:107092. [PMID: 37364357 PMCID: PMC10530522 DOI: 10.1016/j.ultras.2023.107092] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/23/2023] [Revised: 06/19/2023] [Accepted: 06/21/2023] [Indexed: 06/28/2023]
Abstract
Morphologically realistic flow phantoms are essential experimental tools for quantitative ultrasound-based microvessel imaging. As new quantitative flow imaging tools are developed, the need for more complex vessel-mimicking phantoms is indisputable. In this article, we propose a method for fabricating phantoms with sub-millimeter channels consisting of branches and curvatures in various shapes and sizes suitable for quantifying vessel morphological features. We used different tissue-mimicking materials (TMMs) compatible with ultrasound imaging as the base and metal wires of different diameters (0.15-1.25 mm) to create wall-less channels. The TMMs used are silicone rubber, plastisol, conventional gelatin, and medical gelatin. Mother channels in these phantoms were made in diameters of 1.25 mm or 0.3 mm and the daughter channels in diameters 0.3 mm or 0.15 mm. Bifurcations were created by soldering wires together at branch points. Quantitative parameters were assessed, and accuracy of measurements from the ground truth were determined. Channel diameters were seen to have increased (76-270%) compared to the initial state in the power Doppler images, partly due to blood mimicking fluid pressure. Amongst the microflow phantoms made from the different TMMs, the medical gelatin phantom was selected as the best option for microflow imaging, fulfilling the objective of being easy to fabricate with high transmittance while having a speed of sound and acoustic attenuation close to human tissue. A flow velocity of 0.85 ± 0.01 mm/s, comparable to physiological flow velocity was observed in the smallest diameter phantom (medical gelatin branch) presented here. We successfully constructed more complex geometries, including tortuous and multibranch channels using the medical gelatin as the TMM. We anticipate this will create new avenues for validating quantitative ultrasound microvessel imaging techniques.
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Affiliation(s)
- Shaheeda Adusei
- Department of Physiology and Biomedical Engineering, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, MN 55905, USA
| | - Redouane Ternifi
- Department of Physiology and Biomedical Engineering, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, MN 55905, USA
| | - Mostafa Fatemi
- Department of Physiology and Biomedical Engineering, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, MN 55905, USA
| | - Azra Alizad
- Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, MN 55905, USA.
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Nayak R, Lee J, Sotoudehnia S, Chang SY, Fatemi M, Alizad A. Mapping Pharmacologically Evoked Neurovascular Activation and Its Suppression in a Rat Model of Tremor Using Functional Ultrasound: A Feasibility Study. SENSORS (BASEL, SWITZERLAND) 2023; 23:6902. [PMID: 37571686 PMCID: PMC10422538 DOI: 10.3390/s23156902] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/01/2023] [Revised: 06/26/2023] [Accepted: 08/01/2023] [Indexed: 08/13/2023]
Abstract
Functional ultrasound (fUS), an emerging hemodynamic-based functional neuroimaging technique, is especially suited to probe brain activity and primarily used in animal models. Increasing use of pharmacological models for essential tremor extends new research to the utilization of fUS imaging in such models. Harmaline-induced tremor is an easily provoked model for the development of new therapies for essential tremor (ET). Furthermore, harmaline-induced tremor can be suppressed by the same classic medications used for essential tremor, which leads to the utilization of this model for preclinical testing. However, changes in local cerebral activities under the effect of tremorgenic doses of harmaline have not been completely investigated. In this study, we explored the feasibility of fUS imaging for visualization of cerebral activation and deactivation associated with harmaline-induced tremor and tremor-suppressing effects of propranolol. The spatial resolution of fUS using a high frame rate imaging enabled us to visualize time-locked and site-specific changes in cerebral blood flow associated with harmaline-evoked tremor. Intraperitoneal administration of harmaline generated significant neural activity changes in the primary motor cortex and ventrolateral thalamus (VL Thal) regions during tremor and then gradually returned to baseline level as tremor subsided with time. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first functional ultrasound study to show the neurovascular activation of harmaline-induced tremor and the therapeutic suppression in a rat model. Thus, fUS can be considered a noninvasive imaging method for studying neuronal activities involved in the ET model and its treatment.
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Affiliation(s)
- Rohit Nayak
- Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, MN 55905, USA
| | - Jeyeon Lee
- Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, MN 55905, USA
| | - Setayesh Sotoudehnia
- Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, MN 55905, USA
| | - Su-Youne Chang
- Department of Neurologic Surgery, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, MN 55905, USA;
| | - Mostafa Fatemi
- Department of Physiology and Biomedical Engineering, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, MN 55905, USA;
| | - Azra Alizad
- Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, MN 55905, USA
- Department of Physiology and Biomedical Engineering, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, MN 55905, USA;
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Sabeti S, Nayak R, McBane RD, Fatemi M, Alizad A. Contrast-free ultrasound imaging for blood flow assessment of the lower limb in patients with peripheral arterial disease: a feasibility study. Sci Rep 2023; 13:11321. [PMID: 37443250 PMCID: PMC10345143 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-38576-x] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/15/2023] [Accepted: 07/11/2023] [Indexed: 07/15/2023] Open
Abstract
While being a relatively prevalent condition particularly among aging patients, peripheral arterial disease (PAD) of lower extremities commonly goes undetected or misdiagnosed due to its symptoms being nonspecific. Additionally, progression of PAD in the absence of timely intervention can lead to dire consequences. Therefore, development of non-invasive and affordable diagnostic approaches can be highly beneficial in detection and treatment planning for PAD patients. In this study, we present a contrast-free ultrasound-based quantitative blood flow imaging technique for PAD diagnosis. The method involves monitoring the variations of blood flow in the calf muscle in response to thigh-pressure-cuff-induced occlusion. Four quantitative metrics are introduced for analysis of these variations. These metrics include post-occlusion to baseline flow intensity variation (PBFIV), total response region (TRR), Lag0 response region (L0RR), and Lag4 (and more) response region (L4 + RR). We examine the feasibility of this method through an in vivo study consisting of 14 PAD patients with abnormal ankle-brachial index (ABI) and 8 healthy volunteers. Ultrasound data acquired from 13 legs in the patient group and 13 legs in the healthy group are analyzed. Out of the four utilized metrics, three exhibited significantly different distributions between the two groups (p-value < 0.05). More specifically, p-values of 0.0015 for PBFIV, 0.0183 for TRR, and 0.0048 for L0RR were obtained. The results of this feasibility study indicate the diagnostic potential of the proposed method for the detection of PAD.
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Affiliation(s)
- Soroosh Sabeti
- Department of Physiology and Biomedical Engineering, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, MN, USA
| | - Rohit Nayak
- Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, 200 1st Street SW, Rochester, MN, 55905, USA
| | - Robert D McBane
- Department of Cardiovascular, Division of Vascular Medicine, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, MN, USA
| | - Mostafa Fatemi
- Department of Physiology and Biomedical Engineering, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, MN, USA
| | - Azra Alizad
- Department of Physiology and Biomedical Engineering, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, MN, USA.
- Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, 200 1st Street SW, Rochester, MN, 55905, USA.
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Ferroni G, Sabeti S, Abdus-Shakur T, Scalise L, Carter JM, Fazzio RT, Larson NB, Fatemi M, Alizad A. Noninvasive prediction of axillary lymph node breast cancer metastasis using morphometric analysis of nodal tumor microvessels in a contrast-free ultrasound approach. Breast Cancer Res 2023; 25:65. [PMID: 37296471 PMCID: PMC10257266 DOI: 10.1186/s13058-023-01670-z] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/19/2023] [Accepted: 06/02/2023] [Indexed: 06/12/2023] Open
Abstract
PURPOSE Changes in microcirculation of axillary lymph nodes (ALNs) may indicate metastasis. Reliable noninvasive imaging technique to quantify such variations is lacking. We aim to develop and investigate a contrast-free ultrasound quantitative microvasculature imaging technique for detection of metastatic ALN in vivo. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN The proposed ultrasound-based technique, high-definition microvasculature imaging (HDMI) provides superb images of tumor microvasculature at sub-millimeter size scales and enables quantitative analysis of microvessels structures. We evaluated the new HDMI technique on 68 breast cancer patients with ultrasound-identified suspicious ipsilateral axillary lymph nodes recommended for fine needle aspiration biopsy (FNAB). HDMI was conducted before the FNAB and vessel morphological features were extracted, analyzed, and the results were correlated with the histopathology. RESULTS Out of 15 evaluated quantitative HDMI biomarkers, 11 were significantly different in metastatic and reactive ALNs (10 with P << 0.01 and one with 0.01 < P < 0.05). We further showed that through analysis of these biomarkers, a predictive model trained on HDMI biomarkers combined with clinical information (i.e., age, node size, cortical thickness, and BI-RADS score) could identify metastatic lymph nodes with an area under the curve of 0.9 (95% CI [0.82,0.98]), sensitivity of 90%, and specificity of 88%. CONCLUSIONS The promising results of our morphometric analysis of HDMI on ALNs offer a new means of detecting lymph node metastasis when used as a complementary imaging tool to conventional ultrasound. The fact that it does not require injection of contrast agents simplifies its use in routine clinical practice.
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Affiliation(s)
- Giulia Ferroni
- Department of Physiology and Biomedical Engineering, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, MN, 55905, USA
| | - Soroosh Sabeti
- Department of Physiology and Biomedical Engineering, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, MN, 55905, USA
| | - Tasneem Abdus-Shakur
- Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, 200 1st. St. SW, Rochester, MN, 55905, USA
| | - Lorenzo Scalise
- Department of Industrial Engineering and Mathematical Science, Marche Polytechnic University, 60131, Ancona, Italy
| | - Jodi M Carter
- Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, MN, USA
- Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada
| | - Robert T Fazzio
- Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, 200 1st. St. SW, Rochester, MN, 55905, USA
| | - Nicholas B Larson
- Department of Quantitative Health Sciences, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, MN, 55905, USA
| | - Mostafa Fatemi
- Department of Physiology and Biomedical Engineering, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, MN, 55905, USA
| | - Azra Alizad
- Department of Physiology and Biomedical Engineering, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, MN, 55905, USA.
- Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, 200 1st. St. SW, Rochester, MN, 55905, USA.
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Chinchilla L, Frappart T, Fraschini C, Correas JM, Gennisson JL. Resistivity index mapping in Kidney based on ultrasensitive Pulsed-Wave Doppler and automatic spectrogram envelope detection. IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ULTRASONICS, FERROELECTRICS, AND FREQUENCY CONTROL 2023; PP:207-218. [PMID: 37022223 DOI: 10.1109/tuffc.2023.3240283] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/19/2023]
Abstract
In recent years, ultrasensitive Pulsed-Wave Doppler (uPWD) ultrasound (US) has emerged as an alternative imaging approach for microcirculation imaging and as a complementary tool to other imaging modalities, such as positron emission tomography (PET). uPWD is based on the acquisition of a large set of highly spatiotemporally coherent frames, which allows high-quality images of a wide field of view to be obtained. In addition, these acquired frames allow calculation of the resistivity index (RI) of the pulsatile flow detected over the entire field of view, which is of great interest to clinicians, for example, in monitoring the transplanted kidney course. This work aims to develop and evaluate a method to automatically obtain an RI map of the kidney based on the uPWD approach. The effect of time gain compensation (TGC) on the visualization of vascularization and aliasing on the blood flow frequency response, was also assessed. A pilot study conducted in patients referred for renal transplant Doppler examination showed that the proposed method provided relative errors of about 15% for RI measurements with respect to conventional pulsed-wave (PW) Doppler.
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Pialot B, Lachambre C, Mur AL, Augeul L, Petrusca L, Basarab A, Varray F. Adaptive noise reduction for power Doppler imaging using SVD filtering in the channel domain and coherence weighting of pixels. Phys Med Biol 2023; 68. [PMID: 36595318 DOI: 10.1088/1361-6560/acac5d] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/24/2022] [Accepted: 12/16/2022] [Indexed: 12/23/2022]
Abstract
Objective. Ultrafast power Doppler (UPD) is an ultrasound method that can image blood flow at several thousands of frames per second. In particular, the high number of data provided by UPD enables the use of singular value decomposition (SVD) as a clutter filter for suppressing tissue signal. Notably, is has been demonstrated in various applications that SVD filtering increases significantly the sensitivity of UPD to microvascular flows. However, UPD is subjected to significant depth-dependent electronic noise and an optimal denoising approach is still being sought.Approach. In this study, we propose a new denoising method for UPD imaging: the Coherence Factor Mask (CFM). This filter is first based on filtering the ultrasound time-delayed data using SVD in the channel domain to remove clutter signal. Then, a spatiotemporal coherence mask that exploits coherence information between channels for identifying noisy pixels is computed. The mask is finally applied to beamformed images to decrease electronic noise before forming the power Doppler image. We describe theoretically how to filter channel data using a single SVD. Then, we evaluate the efficiency of the CFM filter for denoisingin vitroandin vivoimages and compare its performances with standard UPD and with three existing denoising approaches.Main results. The CFM filter gives gains in signal-to-noise ratio and contrast-to-noise ratio of up to 22 dB and 20 dB, respectively, compared to standard UPD and globally outperforms existing methods for reducing electronic noise. Furthermore, the CFM filter has the advantage over existing approaches of being adaptive and highly efficient while not requiring a cut-off for discriminating noise and blood signals nor for determining an optimal coherence lag.Significance. The CFM filter has the potential to help establish UPD as a powerful modality for imaging microvascular flows.
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Affiliation(s)
- Baptiste Pialot
- Univ Lyon, INSA-Lyon, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, CNRS, Inserm, CREATIS UMR 5220, U1294, F-69621, Lyon, France
| | - Célestine Lachambre
- Univ Lyon, INSA-Lyon, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, CNRS, Inserm, CREATIS UMR 5220, U1294, F-69621, Lyon, France
| | - Antonio Lorente Mur
- Univ Lyon, INSA-Lyon, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, CNRS, Inserm, CREATIS UMR 5220, U1294, F-69621, Lyon, France
| | - Lionel Augeul
- INSERM UMR-1060, Laboratoire CarMeN, Université Lyon 1, Faculté de Médecine, Rockefeller, Lyon, France
| | - Lorena Petrusca
- Univ Lyon, INSA-Lyon, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, CNRS, Inserm, CREATIS UMR 5220, U1294, F-69621, Lyon, France
| | - Adrian Basarab
- Univ Lyon, INSA-Lyon, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, CNRS, Inserm, CREATIS UMR 5220, U1294, F-69621, Lyon, France
| | - François Varray
- Univ Lyon, INSA-Lyon, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, CNRS, Inserm, CREATIS UMR 5220, U1294, F-69621, Lyon, France
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Sabeti S, Ternifi R, Larson NB, Olson MC, Atwell TD, Fatemi M, Alizad A. Morphometric analysis of tumor microvessels for detection of hepatocellular carcinoma using contrast-free ultrasound imaging: A feasibility study. Front Oncol 2023; 13:1121664. [PMID: 37124492 PMCID: PMC10134399 DOI: 10.3389/fonc.2023.1121664] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/12/2022] [Accepted: 03/21/2023] [Indexed: 05/02/2023] Open
Abstract
Introduction A contrast-free ultrasound microvasculature imaging technique was evaluated in this study to determine whether extracting morphological features of the vascular networks in hepatic lesions can be beneficial in differentiating benign and malignant tumors (hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in particular). Methods A total of 29 lesions from 22 patients were included in this work. A post-processing algorithm consisting of clutter filtering, denoising, and vessel enhancement steps was implemented on ultrasound data to visualize microvessel structures. These structures were then further characterized and quantified through additional image processing. A total of nine morphological metrics were examined to compare different groups of lesions. A two-sided Wilcoxon rank sum test was used for statistical analysis. Results In the malignant versus benign comparison, six of the metrics manifested statistical significance. Comparing only HCC cases with the benign, only three of the metrics were significantly different. No statistically significant distinction was observed between different malignancies (HCC versus cholangiocarcinoma and metastatic adenocarcinoma) for any of the metrics. Discussion Obtained results suggest that designing predictive models based on such morphological characteristics on a larger sample size may prove helpful in differentiating benign from malignant liver masses.
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Affiliation(s)
- Soroosh Sabeti
- Department of Physiology and Biomedical Engineering, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, MN, United States
| | - Redouane Ternifi
- Department of Physiology and Biomedical Engineering, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, MN, United States
| | - Nicholas B. Larson
- Department of Quantitative Health Sciences, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, MN, United States
| | - Michael C. Olson
- Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, MN, United States
| | - Thomas D. Atwell
- Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, MN, United States
| | - Mostafa Fatemi
- Department of Physiology and Biomedical Engineering, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, MN, United States
| | - Azra Alizad
- Department of Physiology and Biomedical Engineering, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, MN, United States
- Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, MN, United States
- *Correspondence: Azra Alizad,
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Nowicki A, Tasinkiewicz J, Trots I. Flow imaging using differential Golay encoded ultrasound. ULTRASONICS 2022; 126:106825. [PMID: 36007292 DOI: 10.1016/j.ultras.2022.106825] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/12/2021] [Revised: 05/23/2022] [Accepted: 08/11/2022] [Indexed: 06/15/2023]
Abstract
In our research we present a new method of differential compression of the Golay encoded ultrasound (DCGEU) in the standard beamforming mode to visualize the slow (<1cm/s) blood mimicking fluid flow in small diameter tubes. The proposed DCGEU method is based on synthesis of several subsequent B-mode frames acquired with certain time intervals (30 ms in this study) followed by the visualization of differential beamformed radio frequency (RF) echoes, which yielded the images of the scatterers moving slowly in the vessel and suppressing the static echoes outside the vessel. In order to extract small backscattered echoes from the vessel area we took an advantage of improved sensitivity of the complementary Golay coded sequences (CGCS). The validation of the proposed DCGEU method was carried out in two stages. In the first one, we compared the flow images in small tubes with a diameter of 1 mm and 2.5 mm, reconstructed from numerically simulated acoustic data for the standard transmission of short pulses and 16-bits long CGCS signals. In the second stage of the research, the experimental data were acquired in a flow phantom with silicone tubes with an internal diameter of 1.5 mm and 4.5 mm and a fluid flow velocity of 0.9 cm/s. The experiments were carried out using preprogrammed Verasonics Vantage™ research ultrasound system equipped with ALT L12-5/50 mm MHz linear array transducer with 7.8 MHz center frequency. It was evidenced both in simulations and experiments that the DCGEU provided a good flow image along the entire length of tubing with virtually angle independent detection in comparison with the conventional short pulse interrogation.
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Affiliation(s)
- A Nowicki
- Ultrasound Department, Institute of Fundamental Technological Researches of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland
| | - J Tasinkiewicz
- Ultrasound Department, Institute of Fundamental Technological Researches of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland.
| | - I Trots
- Ultrasound Department, Institute of Fundamental Technological Researches of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland
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Vilimek D, Kubicek J, Golian M, Jaros R, Kahankova R, Hanzlikova P, Barvik D, Krestanova A, Penhaker M, Cerny M, Prokop O, Buzga M. Comparative analysis of wavelet transform filtering systems for noise reduction in ultrasound images. PLoS One 2022; 17:e0270745. [PMID: 35797331 PMCID: PMC9262246 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0270745] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/02/2021] [Accepted: 06/16/2022] [Indexed: 11/19/2022] Open
Abstract
Wavelet transform (WT) is a commonly used method for noise suppression and feature extraction from biomedical images. The selection of WT system settings significantly affects the efficiency of denoising procedure. This comparative study analyzed the efficacy of the proposed WT system on real 292 ultrasound images from several areas of interest. The study investigates the performance of the system for different scaling functions of two basic wavelet bases, Daubechies and Symlets, and their efficiency on images artificially corrupted by three kinds of noise. To evaluate our extensive analysis, we used objective metrics, namely structural similarity index (SSIM), correlation coefficient, mean squared error (MSE), peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) and universal image quality index (Q-index). Moreover, this study includes clinical insights on selected filtration outcomes provided by clinical experts. The results show that the efficiency of the filtration strongly depends on the specific wavelet system setting, type of ultrasound data, and the noise present. The findings presented may provide a useful guideline for researchers, software developers, and clinical professionals to obtain high quality images.
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Affiliation(s)
- Dominik Vilimek
- Department of Cybernetics and Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, VSB - Technical University of Ostrava, Ostrava, Czech Republic
| | - Jan Kubicek
- Department of Cybernetics and Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, VSB - Technical University of Ostrava, Ostrava, Czech Republic
| | - Milos Golian
- Human Motion Diagnostic Center, Department of Human Movement Studies, University of Ostrava, Ostrava, Czech Republic
| | - Rene Jaros
- Department of Cybernetics and Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, VSB - Technical University of Ostrava, Ostrava, Czech Republic
| | - Radana Kahankova
- Department of Cybernetics and Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, VSB - Technical University of Ostrava, Ostrava, Czech Republic
- * E-mail:
| | - Pavla Hanzlikova
- Department of Imaging Method, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ostrava, Ostrava, Czech Republic
| | - Daniel Barvik
- Department of Cybernetics and Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, VSB - Technical University of Ostrava, Ostrava, Czech Republic
| | - Alice Krestanova
- Department of Cybernetics and Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, VSB - Technical University of Ostrava, Ostrava, Czech Republic
| | - Marek Penhaker
- Department of Cybernetics and Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, VSB - Technical University of Ostrava, Ostrava, Czech Republic
| | - Martin Cerny
- Department of Cybernetics and Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, VSB - Technical University of Ostrava, Ostrava, Czech Republic
| | | | - Marek Buzga
- Human Motion Diagnostic Center, Department of Human Movement Studies, University of Ostrava, Ostrava, Czech Republic
- Deparment of Physiology and Pathophysiology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ostrava, Ostrava, Czech Republic
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Huang L, Zhang J, Wei X, Jing L, He Q, Xie X, Wang G, Luo J. Improved Ultrafast Power Doppler Imaging by Using Spatiotemporal Non-Local Means Filtering. IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ULTRASONICS, FERROELECTRICS, AND FREQUENCY CONTROL 2022; 69:1610-1624. [PMID: 35271440 DOI: 10.1109/tuffc.2022.3158611] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/14/2023]
Abstract
The change of microvasculature is associated with the occurrence and development of many diseases. Ultrafast power Doppler imaging (uPDI) is an emerging technology for the visualization of microvessels due to the development of ultrafast plane wave (PW) imaging and advanced clutter filters. However, the low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) caused by unfocused transmit of PW imaging deteriorates the subsequent imaging of microvasculature. Nonlocal means (NLM) filtering has been demonstrated to be effective in the denoising of both natural and medical images, including ultrasound power Doppler images. However, the feasibility and performance of applying an NLM filter on the ultrasound radio frequency (RF) data have not been investigated so far. In this study, we propose to apply an NLM filter on the spatiotemporal domain of clutter filtered blood flow RF data (St-NLM) to improve the quality of uPDI. Experiments were conducted to compare the proposed method with three different methods (under various similarity window sizes), including conventional uPDI without NLM filtering (Non-NLM), NLM filtering on the obtained power Doppler images (PD-NLM), and NLM filtering on the spatial domain of clutter filtered blood flow RF data (S-NLM). Phantom experiments, in vivo contrast-enhanced human spinal cord tumor experiments, and in vivo contrast-free human liver experiments were performed to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed St-NLM method over the other three methods. Qualitative and quantitative results show that the proposed St-NLM method can effectively suppress the background noise, improve the contrast between vessels and background, and preserve the details of small vessels at the same time. In the human liver study, the proposed St-NLM method achieves 31.05-, 24.49-, and 11.15-dB higher contrast-to-noise ratios (CNRs) and 36.86-, 36.86-, and 15.22-dB lower noise powers than Non-NLM, PD-NLM, and S-NLM, respectively. In the human spinal cord tumor, the full-width at half-maximums (FWHMs) of vessel cross Section are 76, 201, and [Formula: see text] for St-NLM, Non-NLM, and S-NLM, respectively. The proposed St-NLM method can enhance the microvascular visualization in uPDI and has the potential for the diagnosis of many microvessel-change-related diseases.
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Qiu XR, Wang MT, Huang H, Kuo LC, Hsu HY, Yang TH, Su FC, Huang CC. Estimating the neovascularity of human finger tendon through high frequency ultrasound micro-Doppler imaging. IEEE Trans Biomed Eng 2022; 69:2667-2678. [PMID: 35192458 DOI: 10.1109/tbme.2022.3152151] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/07/2022]
Abstract
OBJECTIVE Neovascularization of injured tendons prolongs the proliferative phase of healing, but prolonged neovascularization may cause improper healing and pain. Currently, ultrasound Doppler imaging is used for measuring the neovascularization of injured tendons (e.g., Achilles tendon). However, the resolution of state-of-the-art clinical ultrasound machines is insufficient for visualizing the neovascularization in finger tendons. In this study, a high-resolution micro-Doppler imaging (HFDI) based on 40-MHz ultrafast ultrasound imaging was proposed for visualizing the neovascularization in injured finger tendons during multiple rehabilitation phases. METHOD The vessel visibility was enhanced through a block-wise singular value decomposition filter and several curvilinear structure enhancement strategies, including the bowler-hat transform and Hessian-based vessel enhancement filtering. HFDI was verified through small animal kidney and spleen imaging because the related vessel structure patterns of mice are well studied. Five patients with finger tendon injuries underwent HFDI examination at various rehabilitation phases after surgery (weeks 1156), and finger function evaluations were performed for comparisons. RESULTS The results of small animal experiments revealed that the proposed HFDI provides excellent microvasculature imaging performance; the contrast-to-noise ratio of HFDI was approximately 15 dB higher than that of the conventional singular value decomposition filter, and the minimum detectable vessel size for mouse kidney was 35 m without the use of contrast agent. In the human study, neovascularization was clearly observed in injured finger tendons during the early phase of healing (weeks 1121), but it regressed from week 52 to 56. Finger rehabilitation appears to help reduce neovascularization; neovascular density decreased by approximately 1.8%8.0% in participants after 4 weeks of rehabilitation. CONCLUSION The experimental results verified the performance of HFDI for microvasculature imaging and its potential for injured finger tendon evaluations.
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Huang C, Song P, Trzasko JD, Gong P, Lok UW, Tang S, Manduca A, Chen S. Simultaneous Noise Suppression and Incoherent Artifact Reduction in Ultrafast Ultrasound Vascular Imaging. IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ULTRASONICS, FERROELECTRICS, AND FREQUENCY CONTROL 2021; 68:2075-2085. [PMID: 33513103 PMCID: PMC8154644 DOI: 10.1109/tuffc.2021.3055498] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/08/2023]
Abstract
Ultrasound vascular imaging based on ultrafast plane wave imaging and singular value decomposition (SVD) clutter filtering has demonstrated superior sensitivity in blood flow detection. However, ultrafast ultrasound vascular imaging is susceptible to electronic noise due to the weak penetration of unfocused waves, leading to a lower signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at larger depths. In addition, incoherent clutter artifacts originating from strong and moving tissue scatterers that cannot be completely removed create a strong mask on top of the blood signal that obscures the vessels. Herein, a method that can simultaneously suppress the background noise and incoherent artifacts is proposed. The method divides the tilted plane or diverging waves into two subgroups. Coherent spatial compounding is performed within each subgroup, resulting in two compounded data sets. An SVD-based clutter filter is applied to each data set, followed by a correlation between the two data sets to produce a vascular image. Uncorrelated noise and incoherent artifacts can be effectively suppressed with the correlation process, while the coherent blood signal can be preserved. The method was evaluated in wire-target simulations and phantom, in which around 7-10-dB SNR improvement was shown. Consistent results were found in a flow channel phantom with improved SNR by the proposed method (39.9 ± 0.2 dB) against conventional power Doppler (29.1 ± 0.6 dB). Last, we demonstrated the effectiveness of the method combined with block-wise SVD clutter filtering in a human liver, breast tumor, and inflammatory bowel disease data sets. The improved blood flow visualization may facilitate more reliable small vessel imaging for a wide range of clinical applications, such as cancer and inflammatory diseases.
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Affiliation(s)
- Chengwu Huang
- Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, MN 55905, USA
| | - Pengfei Song
- Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, MN 55905, USA
- Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, 61801
- Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, 61801
| | - Joshua D. Trzasko
- Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, MN 55905, USA
| | - Ping Gong
- Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, MN 55905, USA
| | - U-Wai Lok
- Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, MN 55905, USA
| | - Shanshan Tang
- Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, MN 55905, USA
| | - Armando Manduca
- Department of Physiology and Biomedical Engineering, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, MN 55905 USA
| | - Shigao Chen
- Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, MN 55905, USA
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Nayak R, MacNeill J, Flores C, Webb J, Fatemi M, Alizad A. Quantitative assessment of ensemble coherency in contrast-free ultrasound microvasculature imaging. Med Phys 2021; 48:3540-3558. [PMID: 33942320 PMCID: PMC8362033 DOI: 10.1002/mp.14918] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/17/2020] [Revised: 04/27/2021] [Accepted: 04/27/2021] [Indexed: 11/09/2022] Open
Abstract
Purpose Contrast‐free visualization of microvascular blood flow (MBF) using ultrasound can play a valuable role in diagnosis and detection of diseases. In this study, we demonstrate the importance of quantifying ensemble coherence for robust MBF imaging. We propose a novel approach to quantify ensemble coherence by estimating the local spatiotemporal correlation (LSTC) image, and evaluate its efficacy through simulation and in vivo studies. Methods The in vivo patient studies included three volunteers with a suspicious breast tumor, 15 volunteers with a suspicious thyroid tumor, and two healthy volunteers for renal MBF imaging. The breast data displayed negligible prior motion and were used for simulation analysis involving synthetically induced motion, to assess its impact on ensemble coherency and motion artifacts in MBF images. The in vivo thyroid data involved complex physiological motion due to its proximity to the pulsating carotid artery, which was used to assess the in vivo efficacy of the proposed technique. Further, in vivo renal MBF images demonstrated the feasibility of using the proposed ensemble coherence metric for curved array‐based MBF imaging involving phase conversion. All ultrasound data were acquired at high imaging frame rates and the tissue signal was suppressed using spatiotemporal clutter filtering. Thyroid tissue motion was estimated using two‐dimensional normalized cross correlation‐based speckle tracking, which was subsequently used for ensemble motion correction. The coherence of the MBF image was quantified based on Casorati correlation of the Doppler ensemble. Results The simulation results demonstrated that an increase in ensemble motion corresponded with a decrease in ensemble coherency, which reciprocally degraded the MBF images. Further the data acquired from breast tumors demonstrated higher ensemble coherency than that from thyroid tumors. Motion correction improved the coherence of the thyroid MBF images, which substantially improved its visualization. The proposed coherence metrics were also useful in assessing the ensemble coherence for renal MBF imaging. The results also demonstrated that the proposed coherence metric can be reliably estimated from downsampled ensembles (by up to 90%), thus allowing improved computational efficiency for potential applications in real‐time MBF imaging. Conclusions This pilot study demonstrates the importance of assessing ensemble coherency in contrast‐free MBF imaging. The proposed LSTC image quantified coherence of the Doppler ensemble for robust MBF imaging. The results obtained from this pilot study are promising, and warrant further development and in vivo validation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Rohit Nayak
- Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, Minnesota, 55902, USA
| | - Justin MacNeill
- Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, Minnesota, 55902, USA
| | - Cecilia Flores
- Department of Physiology and Biomedical Engineering, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, Minnesota, 55902, USA
| | - Jeremy Webb
- Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, Minnesota, 55902, USA
| | - Mostafa Fatemi
- Department of Physiology and Biomedical Engineering, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, Minnesota, 55902, USA
| | - Azra Alizad
- Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, Minnesota, 55902, USA.,Department of Physiology and Biomedical Engineering, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, Minnesota, 55902, USA
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Kang J, Go D, Song I, Yoo Y. Ultrafast Power Doppler Imaging Using Frame-Multiply-and-Sum-Based Nonlinear Compounding. IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ULTRASONICS, FERROELECTRICS, AND FREQUENCY CONTROL 2021; 68:453-464. [PMID: 32746224 DOI: 10.1109/tuffc.2020.3011708] [Citation(s) in RCA: 14] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/11/2023]
Abstract
Ultrafast power Doppler imaging based on coherent compounding (UPDI-CC) has become a promising technique for microvascular imaging due to its high sensitivity to slow blood flows. However, since this method utilizes a limited number of plane-wave or diverging-wave transmissions for high-frame-rate imaging, it suffers from degraded image quality because of the low contrast resolution. In this article, an ultrafast power Doppler imaging method based on a nonlinear compounding framework, called frame-multiply-and-sum (UPDI-FMAS), is proposed to improve contrast resolution. In UPDI-FMAS, unlike conventional channel-domain delay-multiply-and-sum (DMAS) beamforming, the signal coherence is estimated based on autocorrelation function over plane-wave angle frames. To avoid phase distortion of blood flow signals during the autocorrelation process, clutter filtering is preferentially applied to individual beamformed plane-wave data set. Therefore, only coherent blood flow signals are emphasized, while incoherent background noise is suppressed. The performance of the UPDI-FMAS was evaluated with simulation, phantom, and in vivo studies. For the simulation and phantom studies with a constant laminar flow, the UPDI-FMAS showed improvements in the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) to those of UPDI-CC, i.e., over 10 and 7 dB for 13 plane waves, respectively, and the performances were improved as the number of plane waves increased. Moreover, the enhancement of the image quality due to the increased SNR and CNR in UPDI-FMAS was more clearly depicted with the in vivo study, in which a human kidney and a tumor-bearing mouse were evaluated. These results indicate that the FMAS compounding can improve the image quality of UPDI for microvascular imaging without loss of temporal resolution.
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Nayak R, Lee J, Chantigian S, Fatemi M, Chang SY, Alizad A. Imaging the response to deep brain stimulation in rodent using functional ultrasound. Phys Med Biol 2021; 66:05LT01. [PMID: 33482648 PMCID: PMC7920924 DOI: 10.1088/1361-6560/abdee5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/29/2022]
Abstract
In this study, we explored the feasibility of using functional ultrasound (fUS) imaging to visualize cerebral activation associated with thalamic deep brain stimulation (DBS), in rodents. The ventrolateral (VL) thalamus was stimulated using electrical pulses of low and high frequencies of 10 and 100 Hz, respectively, and multiple voltages (1-7 V) and pulse widths (50-1500 μs). The fUS imaging demonstrated DBS-evoked activation of cerebral cortex based on changes of cerebral blood volume, specifically at the primary motor cortex (PMC). Low frequency stimulation (LFS) demonstrated significantly higher PMC activation compared to higher frequency stimulation (HFS), at intensities (5-7 V). Whereas, at lower intensities (1-3 V), only HFS demonstrated visible PMC activation. Further, LFS-evoked cerebral activation was was primarily located at the PMC. Our data presents the functionality and feasibility of fUS imaging as an investigational tool to identify brain areas associated with DBS. This preliminary study is an important stepping stone towards conducting real-time functional ultrasound imaging of DBS in awake and behaving animal models, which is of significant interest to the community for studying motor-related disorders.
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Affiliation(s)
- Rohit Nayak
- Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, Minnesota 55902, United States
| | - Jeyeon Lee
- Department of Neurologic Surgery, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, Minnesota 55902, United States
| | - Siobhan Chantigian
- Department of Neurologic Surgery, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, Minnesota 55902, United States
| | - Mostafa Fatemi
- Department of Physiology and Biomedical Engineering, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, Minnesota 55902, United States
| | - Su-Youne Chang
- Department of Neurologic Surgery, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, Minnesota 55902, United States
- Department of Physiology and Biomedical Engineering, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, Minnesota 55902, United States
| | - Azra Alizad
- Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, Minnesota 55902, United States
- Department of Physiology and Biomedical Engineering, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, Minnesota 55902, United States
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Zhang N, Ashikuzzaman M, Rivaz H. Clutter suppression in ultrasound: performance evaluation and review of low-rank and sparse matrix decomposition methods. Biomed Eng Online 2020; 19:37. [PMID: 32466753 PMCID: PMC7254711 DOI: 10.1186/s12938-020-00778-z] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/22/2020] [Accepted: 05/07/2020] [Indexed: 11/10/2022] Open
Abstract
Vessel diseases are often accompanied by abnormalities related to vascular shape and size. Therefore, a clear visualization of vasculature is of high clinical significance. Ultrasound color flow imaging (CFI) is one of the prominent techniques for flow visualization. However, clutter signals originating from slow-moving tissue are one of the main obstacles to obtain a clear view of the vascular network. Enhancement of the vasculature by suppressing the clutters is a significant and irreplaceable step for many applications of ultrasound CFI. Currently, this task is often performed by singular value decomposition (SVD) of the data matrix. This approach exhibits two well-known limitations. First, the performance of SVD is sensitive to the proper manual selection of the ranks corresponding to clutter and blood subspaces. Second, SVD is prone to failure in the presence of large random noise in the dataset. A potential solution to these issues is using decomposition into low-rank and sparse matrices (DLSM) framework. SVD is one of the algorithms for solving the minimization problem under the DLSM framework. Many other algorithms under DLSM avoid full SVD and use approximated SVD or SVD-free ideas which may have better performance with higher robustness and less computing time. In practice, these models separate blood from clutter based on the assumption that steady clutter represents a low-rank structure and that the moving blood component is sparse. In this paper, we present a comprehensive review of ultrasound clutter suppression techniques and exploit the feasibility of low-rank and sparse decomposition schemes in ultrasound clutter suppression. We conduct this review study by adapting 106 DLSM algorithms and validating them against simulation, phantom, and in vivo rat datasets. Two conventional quality metrics, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR), are used for performance evaluation. In addition, computation times required by different algorithms for generating clutter suppressed images are reported. Our extensive analysis shows that the DLSM framework can be successfully applied to ultrasound clutter suppression.
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Affiliation(s)
- Naiyuan Zhang
- Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Concordia, Rue Sainte-Catherine O, Montreal, Canada
| | - Md Ashikuzzaman
- Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Concordia, Rue Sainte-Catherine O, Montreal, Canada
| | - Hassan Rivaz
- Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Concordia, Rue Sainte-Catherine O, Montreal, Canada.
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