Acoustic super-resolution with ultrasound and microbubbles

Viessmann, Olivia; Eckersley, Robert J.; Christensen-Jeffries, Kirsten; Tang, Meng‐Xing; Dunsby, Christopher

doi:10.1088/0031-9155/58/18/6447

Cited by 240 publications

(169 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Recently, many super-resolution techniques based on the super-localization of spatially separated microbubble contrast agents have been described in the literature. 38,39 For example, the center of mass of isolated microbubbles can be calculated and extracted from an ultrasound image to construct super-resolved microbubble location density maps. This approach could be adapted to localize isolated ADV events.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wideband acoustic activation and detection of droplet vaporization events using a capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer

Novell¹,

Arena²,

Oralkan³

et al. 2016

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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An ongoing challenge exists in understanding and optimizing the acoustic droplet vaporization (ADV) process to enhance contrast agent effectiveness for biomedical applications. Acoustic signatures from vaporization events can be identified and differentiated from microbubble or tissue signals based on their frequency content. The present study exploited the wide bandwidth of a 128-element capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer (CMUT) array for activation (8 MHz) and real-time imaging (1 MHz) of ADV events from droplets circulating in a tube. Compared to a commercial piezoelectric probe, the CMUT array provides a substantial increase of the contrast-to-noise ratio.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wideband acoustic activation and detection of droplet vaporization events using a capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer

Novell¹,

Arena²,

Oralkan³

et al. 2016

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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“…Currently, most of the ultrasound localisation microscopy techniques use the same idea to form a super-resolution image by localizing spatially isolated microbubbles through multiple frames. Within last five years, several research groups demonstrated the use of this super-resolution method within microfluidic channels, tissue phantoms with microvessels, through an ex vivo human skull model, and pre-clinical mouse models [1]- [6]. Microbubble localization precision as small as 2 − 4 µm was reported using clinically relevant ultrasound frequencies [1], [7].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Within last five years, several research groups demonstrated the use of this super-resolution method within microfluidic channels, tissue phantoms with microvessels, through an ex vivo human skull model, and pre-clinical mouse models [1]- [6]. Microbubble localization precision as small as 2 − 4 µm was reported using clinically relevant ultrasound frequencies [1], [7]. These methods require 10-20 minutes of ultrasound acquisition to visualise the microvascular structures due to the slow flow rate in capillaries.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Localisation of multiple non-isolated microbubbles with frequency decomposition in super-resolution imaging

Harput

Christensen-Jeffries

Brown

et al. 2017

2017 IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium (IUS)

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Abstract-Sub-diffraction imaging, also known as ultrasound localization microscopy, is a novel method that can overcome the fundamental diffraction limit by localizing spatially isolated microbubbles. This method requires the use of a low concentration of microbubbles to ensure that they are spatially isolated. For in vivo microvascular imaging, especially for cancer tissue with high microvascular density, spatial isolation cannot be always achieved, since vessels are close to each other and the speed of flow is slow.This study proposes a frequency decomposition method that uses the polydisperse nature of commercial contrast agents to separate spatially non-isolated microbubbles with different acoustic signatures. Zero-phase filters were applied to ensure that there is no relative phase delay between decomposed signals. Results showed that a super-resolution image after frequency decomposition can be generated with 1.4 times lower number of acquisitions.

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“…However, their demonstration was limited to image only two spectrally distinct absorbers within each PSF. In this work, we transpose the approach with flowing particles proposed in [6] for ultrasound imaging to photoacoustic imaging: we demonstrate experimentally that the localization of optical absorbers flowing through microfluidic-based vessel phantoms allows the reconstruction of the sample structure beyond the acoustic diffraction limit. A schematic of the experimental setup used is shown in Figure 1.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Overcoming the acoustic diffraction limit in photoacoustic imaging by the localization of flowing absorbers

2017

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The resolution of photoacoustic imaging deep inside scattering media is limited by the acoustic diffraction limit. In this work, taking inspiration from superresolution imaging techniques developed to beat the optical diffraction limit, we demonstrate that the localization of individual optical absorbers can provide super-resolution photoacoustic imaging well beyond the acoustic diffraction limit. As a proof-of-principle experiment, photoacoustic cross-sectional images of microfluidic channels were obtained with a 15 MHz linear CMUT array while absorbing beads were flown through the channels. The localization of individual absorbers allowed to obtain super-resolved crosssectional image of the channels, by reconstructing both the channel width and position with an accuracy better than λ/10. Given the discrete nature of endogenous absorbers such as red blood cells, or that of exogenous particular contrast agents, localization is a promising approach to push the current resolution limits of photoacoustic imaging.Photoacoustic imaging is a multi-wave biomedical imaging modality, based on the detection of ultrasound following light absorption, which therefore provides optical images with specific absorption contrast [1,2]. The resolution of photoacoustic imaging is limited either by optical diffraction or by acoustic diffraction. The optical-resolution regime is limited by optical scattering to the depth range of optical microscopy based on ballistic photons, i.e to depths less than a few hundreds of microns. At larger depths, in the regime of multiply scattered light, the resolution of photoacoustic imaging is limited by acoustic diffraction. Because ultrasound attenuation increases with frequency, the acoustic resolution decreases with depth, and it is widely considered that the depth-to-resolution ratio is on the order of 200 for depth ranging from a few hundreds of micron to several centimeters. Therefore, exactly as for pulse-echo ultrasound imaging, acoustic-resolution photoacoustic imaging is limited at a given depth by the acoustic-diffraction limit that corresponds to the highest detectable frequency.In recent years, several research groups investigated new approaches to overcome the acoustic-diffraction limit, both for ultrasound imaging and photoacoustic imaging. In pulse-echo ultrasound imaging, many studies took inspiration from localization approaches developped in optics (such as photoactivated localization microscopy (PALM [3]) or stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy (STORM [4])). Localization-based imaging techniques are relying on the possibility with a diffractionlimited imaging system to determine the position of a point source with a precision much larger than the size of the point spread function (PSF), provided that the PSFs corresponding to different sources are separated in some parameter space [5]. The first proof-of-concept experiments in ultrasound imaging performed localization by detecting the backscattered signals from a diluted solution of microbubbles, and images of tubebased ...

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Acoustic super-resolution with ultrasound and microbubbles

Cited by 240 publications

References 11 publications

Wideband acoustic activation and detection of droplet vaporization events using a capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer

Wideband acoustic activation and detection of droplet vaporization events using a capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer

Localisation of multiple non-isolated microbubbles with frequency decomposition in super-resolution imaging

Overcoming the acoustic diffraction limit in photoacoustic imaging by the localization of flowing absorbers

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