Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 19, 2026
Light Sheet Microscopy of Fast Cardiac Dynamics in Zebrafish Embryos
Published on: August 13, 2021
Pulse inversion chirp coded tissue harmonic imaging (PI-CTHI) of Zebrafish heart using high frame rate ultrasound
Jinhyoung Park1, Ying Huang, Ruimin Chen
1NIH Resource on Medical Ultrasonic Transducer Technology, Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Southern California, 1042 Downey Way, University Park, DRB125, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA. jinhyoung.park@gmail.com
Abstract:
This paper reports a pulse inversion chirp coded tissue harmonic imaging (PI-CTHI) method for visualizing small animal hearts that provides fine spatial resolution at a high frame rate without sacrificing the echo signal to noise ratio (eSNR). A 40 MHz lithium niobate (LiNbO(3)) single element transducer is employed to evaluate the performance of PI-CTHI by scanning tungsten wire targets, spherical anechoic voids, and zebrafish hearts. The wire phantom results show that PI-CTHI improves the eSNR by 4 dB from that of conventional pulse inversion tissue harmonic imaging (PI-THI), while still maintaining a spatial resolution of 88 and 110 μm in the axial and lateral directions, respectively. The range side lobe level of PI-CTHI is 11 dB lower than that of band-pass filtered CTHI (or F-CTHI). In the anechoic sphere phantom study, the contrast-to-noise ratio of PI-CTHI is found to be 2.7, indicating a 34% enhancement over conventional PI-THI. Due to such improved eSNR and contrast resolution, blood clots in zebrafish hearts can be readily visualized throughout heart regeneration after 20% of the ventricle is removed. Disappearance of the clots in the early stages of the regeneration has been observed for 7 days without sacrificing the fish.
