Ultrasound Microvascular Imaging Based on Super-Resolution Radial Fluctuations

Super-resolution ultrasound (SRUS) has become a tool for in vivo microvascular imaging. Most of the SRUS methods are based on microbubble localization: namely, ultrasound localization microscopy (ULM). The aim of this study was to develop a nonlocalization SRUS method and verify its feasibility in microvascular imaging.

We introduce a new super-resolution strategy based on the postprocessing of contrast-enhanced ultrasound. The proposed method, which is termed ultrasound diffraction attenuation microscopy (UDAM), uses super-resolution radial fluctuations instead of microbubble localization to overcome acoustic diffraction limits. Biceps of Japanese long-ear white rabbits were adopted to validate its feasibility on muscle vascular imaging, using a clinical accessible ultrasound system at a frame rate of 30 Hz under a single bolus injection of SonoVue (Bracco SpA, Milan, Italy). The super-resolution image was compared with the maximum-intensity projection and ULM.

The animal study illustrates that the proposed UDAM can obtain super-resolution microvascular images of rabbits' muscles under a single bolus injection of SonoVue with a 150-second contrast-enhanced ultrasound video. Both ULM and UDAM can achieve a very similar vascular structure with the maximum-intensity projection but much higher spatial resolution. The measurement of 1-dimensional signals shows that UDAM can distinguish the subwavelength structures and substantial reduce the full width at half-maximum of microvessels.

We conclude UDAM provides a noninvasive tool for in vivo super-resolution microvascular imaging.