Bowen Jing

Ultrasound contrast plane wave imaging with higher CTR based on pulse inversion bubble wavelet transform

Although ultrasound contrast plane wave imaging can avoid the repeated disruption and capture the transient spatial distribution of microbubbles, it is still limited by lower contrast-to-tissue ratio (CTR) due to low negative peak pressure and lacks of transmit focus. The purpose of this paper was to develop an ultrasound contrast plane wave imaging method combined with pulse inversion bubble wavelet transform imaging (PIWI) technique to improve the CTR of plane wave images. First, a pair of “bubble wavelets” was constructed by microbubbles scattering echoes predicted by modified Herring equation driven by two inverted plane waves. Next, the original echoes from such plane waves were performed by bubble wavelet correlation analysis. Then, such echoes replaced by the maximal wavelet correlation coefficients were summed to distinguish echoes of microbubbles and tissues. In vivo rabbit kidney experiments, the CTR of plane wave imaging was improved to 15.19 dB by PIWI technique without the sacrifice of image frame, which was larger 4.48±0.96 dB than that of raw images. In summary, this method could contribute to plane wave imaging by allowing the continuous transient monitoring of the accumulation of microbubbles with higher CTR.

Visualizing the movement of the contact between vocal folds during vibration by using array-based transmission ultrasonic glottography

For the purpose of noninvasively visualizing the dynamics of the contact between vibrating vocal fold medial surfaces, an ultrasonic imaging method which is referred to as array-based transmission ultrasonic glottography is proposed. An array of ultrasound transducers is used to detect the ultrasound wave transmitted from one side of the vocal folds to the other side through the small-sized contact between the vocal folds. A passive acoustic mapping method is employed to visualize and locate the contact. The results of the investigation using tissue-mimicking phantoms indicate that it is feasible to use the proposed method to visualize and locate the contact between soft tissues. Furthermore, the proposed method was used for investigating the movement of the contact between the vibrating vocal folds of excised canine larynges. The results indicate that the vertical movement of the contact can be visualized as a vertical movement of a high-intensity stripe in a series of images obtained by using the proposed method. Moreover, a visualization and analysis method, which is referred to as array-based ultrasonic kymography, is presented. The velocity of the vertical movement of the contact, which is estimated from the array-based ultrasonic kymogram, could reach 0.8 m/s during the vocal fold vibration.

Increasing Axial Resolution of Ultrasonic Imaging With a Joint Sparse Representation Model

The axial resolution of ultrasonic imaging is confined by the temporal width of acoustic pulse generated by the transducer, which has a limited bandwidth. Deconvolution can eliminate this effect and, therefore, improve the resolution. However, most ultrasonic imaging methods perform deconvolution scan line by scan line, and therefore the information embedded within the neighbor scan lines is unexplored, especially for those materials with layered structures such as blood vessels. In this paper, a joint sparse representation model is proposed to increase the axial resolution of ultrasonic imaging. The proposed model combines the sparse deconvolution along the axial direction with a sparsity-favoring constraint along the lateral direction. Since the constraint explores the information embedded within neighbor scan lines by connecting nearby pixels in the ultrasound image, the axial resolution of the image improves after deconvolution. The results on simulated data showed that the proposed method can increase resolution and discover layered structure. Moreover, the results on real data showed that the proposed method can measure carotid intima-media thickness automatically with good quality (0.56 ± 0.03 versus 0.60 ± 0.06 mm manually).

Discover layered structure in ultrasound images with a joint sparse representation model

Deconvolution can improve the resolution of ultrasound system since the effect of point spread function can be removed. Traditional methods carry out the deconvolution line by line, so the neighborhood information are unused. A joint sparse model is proposed in this work to discover layered structure in ultrasound images. The model joints the axial deconvolution with a sparse lateral constraint. The model was tested on simulation and real data, and results support the enhanced performance in terms of resolution.

Pulse-Inversion Subharmonic Ultrafast Active Cavitation Imaging in Tissue Using Fast Eigenspace-Based Adaptive Beamforming and Cavitation Deconvolution

Pulse-inversion subharmonic (PISH) imaging can display information relating to pure cavitation bubbles while excluding that of tissue. Although plane-wave-based ultrafast active cavitation imaging (UACI) can monitor the transient activities of cavitation bubbles, its resolution and cavitation-to-tissue ratio (CTR) are barely satisfactory but can be significantly improved by introducing eigenspace-based (ESB) adaptive beamforming. PISH and UACI are a natural combination for imaging of pure cavitation activity in tissue; however, it raises two problems: 1) the ESB beamforming is hard to implement in real time due to the enormous amount of computation associated with the covariance matrix inversion and eigendecomposition and 2) the narrowband characteristic of the subharmonic filter will incur a drastic degradation in resolution. Thus, in order to jointly address these two problems, we propose a new PISH–UACI method using novel fast ESB (F-ESB) beamforming and cavitation deconvolution for nonlinear signals. This method greatly reduces the computational complexity by using F-ESB beamforming through dimensionality reduction based on principal component analysis, while maintaining the high quality of ESB beamforming. The degraded resolution is recovered using cavitation deconvolution through a modified convolution model and compressive deconvolution. Both simulations and in vitro experiments were performed to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. Compared with the ESB-based PISH–UACI, the entire computation of our proposed approach was reduced by 99%, while the axial resolution gain and CTR were increased by 3 times and 2 dB, respectively, confirming that satisfactory performance can be obtained for monitoring pure cavitation bubbles in tissue erosion.

Visualizing the Vibration of Laryngeal Tissue during Phonation Using Ultrafast Plane Wave Ultrasonography

Ultrafast plane wave ultrasonography is employed in this study to visualize the vibration of the larynx and quantify the vibration phase as well as the vibration amplitude of the laryngeal tissue. Ultrasonic images were obtained at 5000 to 10,000 frames/s in the coronal plane at the level of the glottis. Although the image quality degraded when the imaging mode was switched from conventional ultrasonography to ultrafast plane wave ultrasonography, certain anatomic structures such as the vocal folds, as well as the sub- and supraglottic structures, including the false vocal folds, can be identified in the ultrafast plane wave ultrasonic image. The periodic vibration of the vocal fold edge could be visualized in the recorded image sequence during phonation. Furthermore, a motion estimation method was used to quantify the displacement of laryngeal tissue from hundreds of frames of ultrasonic data acquired. Vibratory displacement waveforms of the sub- and supraglottic structures were successfully obtained at a high level of ultrasonic signal correlation. Moreover, statistically significant differences in vibration pattern between the sub- and supraglottic structures were found. Variation of vibration amplitude along the subglottic mucosal surface is significantly smaller than that along the supraglottic mucosal surface. Phase delay of vibration along the subglottic mucosal surface is significantly smaller than that along the supraglottic mucosal surface.

Compressive adaptive beamforming in 2D and 3D ultrafast active cavitation imaging

The ultrafast active cavitation imaging (UACI) based on plane wave can be implemented with high frame rate, in which adaptive beamforming technique was introduced to enhance resolutions and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of images. However, regular adaptive beamforming continuously updates the spatial filter for each sample point, which requires a huge amount of calculation, especially in the case of a high sampling rate, and, moreover, 3D imaging. In order to achieve UACI rapidly with satisfactory resolution and SNR, this paper proposed an adaptive beamforming on the basis of compressive sensing (CS), which can retain the quality of adaptive beamforming but reduce the calculating amount substantially. The results of simulations and experiments showed that comparing with regular adaptive beamforming, this new method successfully achieved about eightfold in time consuming.

High speed imaging and measurement of laryngeal vibration during phonation using ultrafast ultrasonography: A preliminary study

Observation and measurement of laryngeal vibration during phonation is essential for study of voice production. Due to the advantages in noninvasiveness and penetration, conventional B mode ultrasonography has been introduced in our previous studies of laryngeal tissue vibration. However, its main drawbacks are the insufficient frame rate, drastically narrowed field of view(FOV) and line to line acquisition lag. Thus, ultrafast ultrasonography that offers a much wider FOV and ultrahigh frame rate is introduced in the present study for observation and measurement of laryngeal vibration. Ultrafast ultrasonography is achieved by emitting a plane wave using the full aperture of a linear array transducer on a scanner(SonixTouch, Ultrasonix, Canada) and then applying beamforming on received raw RF data. The FOV covers the whole glottis as well as sub- and supraglottal structures of the larynx. Non-stationary laryngeal vibration are recorded at 5000 fps when subjects start voicing vowel /u:/ during experiments. To measure the vibration, a RF speckle tracking algorithm based on normalized cross correlation is used. The cross correlation coefficient between the displaced and best matched reference speckle is also obtained at each point within the region of interest. The electroglottogram(EGG) is recorded as a reference indicator of vibration phase. The vibration of the vocal fold can be easily identified and shows clear correlation with EGG waveform. The non-stationary process of the vibration of sub and supra glottal tissue during onset of voicing is well quantified with high temporal resolution, while the vibration of the body and cover of the vocal fold appears chaotic and against mechanical principle. Measurement of vibration of the vocal fold body is compromised by its low signal-to-noise ratio. Measurement of vibration of the vocal fold edge is compromised by severe signal decorrelation. Nevertheless, ultrafast ultrasonography still can be used in visualization and measurement of the vibration and deformation of certain structures in the larynx. Thus, there is potential value of this technique being used in estimation of mechanical properties of laryngeal tissue.

Passive acoustic mapping of cavitation using eigenspace-based robust Capon beamformer in ultrasound therapy

Pulse-echo imaging technique can only play a role when high intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) is turned off due to the interference between the primary HIFU signal and the transmission pulse. Passive acoustic mapping (PAM) has been proposed as a tool for true real-time monitoring of HIFU therapy. However, the most-used PAM algorithm based on time exposure acoustic (TEA) limits the quality of cavitation image. Recently, robust Capon beamformer (RCB) has been used in PAM to provide improved resolution and reduced artifacts over TEA-based PAM, but the presented results have not been satisfactory. In the present study, we applied an eigenspace-based RCB (EISRCB) method to further improve the PAM image quality. The optimal weighting vector of the proposed method was found by projecting the RCB weighting vector onto the desired vector subspace constructed from the eigenstructure of the covariance matrix. The performance of the proposed PAM was validated by both simulations and in vitro histotripsy experiments. The results suggested that the proposed PAM significantly outperformed the conventionally used TEA and RCB-based PAM. The comparison results between pulse-echo images of the residual bubbles and cavitation images showed the potential of our proposed PAM in accurate localization of cavitation activity during HIFU therapy.

Visualizing the mechanical wave of vocal fold tissue during phonation using electroglottogram-triggered ultrasonography

In order to investigate the vibration pattern, especially the vibrational phase of tissue beneath the vocal fold mucosa, an imaging method called electroglottogram-triggered ultrasonography is proposed. The ultrasonic images of the vocal fold vibration are obtained in the coronal plane from five adult subjects during phonation. The velocity of the vocal fold tissue beneath the mucosal surface is obtained by using a motion estimation method. The results show that the vibration phase difference between tissues at different locations beneath the vocal fold mucosa results in a mechanical wave traveling upward at a speed of 720 to 1826 mm/s.