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Updated: Aug 26, 2026
Non-invasive Parenchymal, Vascular and Metabolic High-frequency Ultrasound and Photoacoustic Rat Deep Brain Imaging
Published on: March 2, 2015
Transcranial Acoustoelectric Brain Imaging with High Spatiotemporal Resolution
Hao Zhang1, Guowei Chen2, Xue Wang2
1Academy of Medical Engineering and Translational Medicine, State Key Laboratory of Advanced Medical Materials and Devices, Tianjin International Joint Research Centre for Neural Engineering, and Tianjin Key Laboratory of Brain Science and Neuroengineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China.; Haihe Laboratory of Brain-Computer Interaction and Human-Machine Integration, Tianjin, China.
Abstract:
Non-invasive neuroimaging has long faced the inherent trade-off between spatial and temporal resolution. Acoustoelectric brain imaging (ABI) holds promise to bridge this gap by combining the spatial precision of focused ultrasound (millimeter-level) with the temporal resolution of electroencephalography (EEG) signals (millisecond-level). However, its transcranial application remains fundamentally challenged by skull-induced wavefront aberration and attenuation. Here, we developed a full ABI system featuring a custom 128-element ultrasound phased array. Our system integrates developed algorithms for transcranial phase and amplitude correction, which were experimentally validated through an ex vivo human skull. We demonstrate that our system enables precise intracranial focus steering (lateral error ≤ 0.2 mm), accurate source localization (error ≤ 0.8 mm), and high-fidelity waveform reconstruction (correlation coefficient > 0.84). This work addresses the fundamental challenge of skull-induced imaging quality degradation in ABI, providing algorithmic and systemic foundations for advancing non-invasive neuroimaging techniques.
