Microvascular flow dictates the compromise between spatial resolution and acquisition time in Ultrasound Localization Microscopy

Hingot, Vincent; Errico, Claudia; Heiles, Baptiste; Rahal, Line; Tanter, Mickaël; Couture, Olivier

doi:10.1038/s41598-018-38349-x

Cited by 134 publications

(178 citation statements)

References 26 publications

(34 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

171

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…ings of other investigators 22,32 we were able to reconstruct ULM images at a < 10 µm pixel size, which may permit the localization of microvascular scale features. Most of the tissue background present in the B-mode cineloops ( Fig.…”

Section: Super-resolution Ulm Detects Capillary Blood Flow In Cam Tummentioning

confidence: 79%

Ultrasound localization microscopy of renal tumor xenografts in chicken embryo is correlated to hypoxia

Lowerison

Huang

Lucien

et al. 2020

Sci Rep

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Ultrasound localization microscopy (ULM) permits the reconstruction of super-resolved microvascular images at clinically relevant penetration depths, which can be potentially leveraged to provide noninvasive quantitative measures of tissue hemodynamics and hypoxic status. We demonstrate that ULM microbubble data processing methods, applied to images acquired with a Verasonics Vantage 256 system, can provide a non-invasive imaging surrogate biomarker of tissue oxygenation status. This technique was applied to evaluate the microvascular structure, vascular perfusion, and hypoxia of a renal cell carcinoma xenograft model grown in the chorioallantoic membrane of chicken embryos. Histological microvascular density was significantly correlated to ULM measures of intervessel distance (R = −0.92, CI 95 = [−0.99,−0.42], p = 0.01). The Distance Metric, a measure of vascular tortuosity, was found to be significantly correlated to hypoxyprobe quantifications (R = 0.86, CI 95 = [0.17, 0.99], p = 0.03). ULM, by providing non-invasive in vivo microvascular structural information, has the potential to be a crucial clinical imaging modality for the diagnosis and therapy monitoring of solid tumors.

show abstract

Section: Super-resolution Ulm Detects Capillary Blood Flow In Cam Tummentioning

confidence: 79%

Ultrasound localization microscopy of renal tumor xenografts in chicken embryo is correlated to hypoxia

Lowerison

Huang

Lucien

et al. 2020

Sci Rep

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…We posit that this MB separation technique allows for useful ULM imaging at relatively high MB concentrations and is therefore preferable to the clinically relevant solutions of MB where MB signals may be spatially overlapping. Given that Hingot et al 21 report that the long acquisition times for ULM imaging are dictated by rare MB flow events in the microvasculature, it follows that higher MB injection concentrations would allow for reduced acquisition times. We observed that MB separation improved the performance of established MB localization and tracking algorithms 7 and thereby resulted in better super-resolution images of vasculature.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Short Acquisition Time Super-Resolution Ultrasound Microvessel Imaging via Microbubble Separation

Huang

Lowerison

Trzasko

et al. 2020

Sci Rep

112

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Super-resolution ultrasound localization microscopy (ULM), based on localization and tracking of individual microbubbles (MBs), offers unprecedented microvascular imaging resolution at clinically relevant penetration depths. However, ULM is currently limited by the requirement of dilute MB concentrations to ensure spatially sparse MB events for accurate localization and tracking. The corresponding long imaging acquisition times (tens of seconds or several minutes) to accumulate sufficient isolated MB events for full reconstruction of microvasculature preclude the clinical translation of the technique. To break this fundamental tradeoff between acquisition time and MB concentration, in this paper we propose to separate spatially overlapping MB events into sub-populations, each with sparser MB concentration, based on spatiotemporal differences in the flow dynamics (flow speeds and directions). MB localization and tracking are performed for each sub-population separately, permitting more robust ULM imaging of high-concentration MB injections. The superiority of the proposed MB separation technique over conventional ULM processing is demonstrated in flow channel phantom data, and in the chorioallantoic membrane of chicken embryos with optical imaging as an in vivo reference standard. Substantial improvement of ULM is further demonstrated on a chicken embryo tumor xenograft model and a chicken brain, showing both morphological and functional microvasculature details at super-resolution within a short acquisition time (several seconds). the proposed technique allows more robust MB localization and tracking at relatively high MB concentrations, alleviating the need for dilute MB injections, and thereby shortening the acquisition time of ULM imaging and showing great potential for clinical translation.

show abstract

“…The true size of a vessel should only be established with a large number of microbubble tracks, at a minimum sufficient to cover the vessel diameter. Consequently, the minimal number of tracks required to reconstruct a vessel was proposed by Hingot et al (2019) as the width of the vessel to be imaged divided by the super-resolved pixel size.…”

Section: Trackingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Super-resolution Ultrasound Imaging

Christensen-Jeffries¹,

Couture²,

Dayton³

et al. 2020

Ultrasound in Medicine & Biology

Self Cite

315

173

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The majority of exchanges of oxygen and nutrients are performed around vessels smaller than 100 mm, allowing cells to thrive everywhere in the body. Pathologies such as cancer, diabetes and arteriosclerosis can profoundly alter the microvasculature. Unfortunately, medical imaging modalities only provide indirect observation at this scale. Inspired by optical microscopy, ultrasound localization microscopy has bypassed the classic compromise between penetration and resolution in ultrasonic imaging. By localization of individual injected microbubbles and tracking of their displacement with a subwavelength resolution, vascular and velocity maps can be produced at the scale of the micrometer. Super-resolution ultrasound has also been performed through signal fluctuations with the same type of contrast agents, or through switching on and off nano-sized phase-change contrast agents. These techniques are now being applied pre-clinically and clinically for imaging of the microvasculature of the brain, kidney, skin, tumors and lymph nodes.

show abstract

Microvascular flow dictates the compromise between spatial resolution and acquisition time in Ultrasound Localization Microscopy

Cited by 134 publications

References 26 publications

Ultrasound localization microscopy of renal tumor xenografts in chicken embryo is correlated to hypoxia

Ultrasound localization microscopy of renal tumor xenografts in chicken embryo is correlated to hypoxia

Short Acquisition Time Super-Resolution Ultrasound Microvessel Imaging via Microbubble Separation

Super-resolution Ultrasound Imaging

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About