A super-resolution ultrasound imaging method based on active-modulated super-resolution optical fluctuation imaging.

Abstract

Super resolution ultrasound imaging (SR-US) methods including super-resolution optical fluctuation imaging (SOFI) have been successfully demonstrated to improve imaging performance of ultrasound (US). However, the imaging quality of US improved by conventional SOFI depends on the probability of microbubbles (MB) appearing in imaging regions. Current SOFI-based ultrasound imaging methods usually fix the probability of MBs, ignoring the effect of probability characteristics, leading to artifacts in high-order SOFI images. Inspired by active-modulated SOFI (AR-SOFI), in this paper, we propose a new method, termed as AR-SOFI-US, for further improving the performance of SR-US, which is achieved by effectively controlling the probabilities of MBs on an appropriate range. Through a series of numerical simulations, we compare the imaging resolution at differing MB probabilities and demonstrate that by controlling the probabilities of MBs when they appear in the imaging regions, incorporating the proposed AR-SOFI-US method, we can improve the spatial resolution of SR-US to a higher degree, especially for the high-order SOFI imaging results.