TY - JOUR
T1 - Improved Ultrasound Microvessel Imaging Using Deconvolution with Total Variation Regularization
AU - Lok, U. Wai
AU - Trzasko, Joshua D.
AU - Huang, Chengwu
AU - Tang, Shanshan
AU - Gong, Ping
AU - Kim, Yohan
AU - Lucien, Fabrice
AU - Lowerison, Matthew R.
AU - Song, Pengfei
AU - Chen, Shigao
N1 - Funding Information:
This project was supported in part by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) under Award Nos. R01 DK120559, R03 EB027742 and R00 CA214523. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH. The authors thank Desiree Lanzino for her assistance in editing the article.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 World Federation for Ultrasound in Medicine & Biology
PY - 2021/4
Y1 - 2021/4
N2 - Singular value decomposition-based clutter filters can robustly reject tissue clutter, allowing for detection of slow blood flow in imaging microvasculature. However, to identify microvessels, high ultrasound frequency must be used to increase the spatial resolution at the expense of shorter depth of penetration. Deconvolution using Tikhonov regularization is an imaging processing method widely used to improve spatial resolution. The ringing artifact of Tikhonov regularization, though, can produce image artifacts such as non-existent microvessels, which degrade image quality. Therefore, a deconvolution method using total variation is proposed in this study to improve spatial resolution and mitigate the ringing artifact. Performance of the proposed method was evaluated using chicken embryo brain, ex ovo chicken embryo chorioallantoic membrane and tumor data. Results revealed that the reconstructed power Doppler (PD) images are substantially improved in spatial resolution compared with original PD images: the full width half-maximum (FWHM) of the cross-sectional profile of a microvessel was improved from 132 to 83 µm. Two neighboring microvessels that were 154 µm apart were better separated using the proposed method than conventional PD imaging. Additionally, 223 FWHMs measured from the cross-sectional profiles of 223 vessels were used to determine the improvement in FWHM with the proposed method statistically. The mean ± standard deviation of the FWHM without and with the proposed method was 233.19 ± 85.08 and 172.31 ± 75.11 μm, respectively; the maximum FWHM without and with the proposed method was 693.01 and 668.69 μm; and the minimum FWHM without and with the proposed method was 73.92 and 45.74 μm. There were statistically significant differences between FWHMs with and without the proposed method according to the rank-sum test, p < 0.0001. The contrast-to-noise ratio improved from 1.06 to 4.03 dB with use of the proposed method. We also compared the proposed method with Tikhonov regularization using ex ovo chicken embryo chorioallantoic membrane data. We found that the proposed method outperformed Tikhonov regularization as false microvessels appeared using the Tikhonov regularization but not with the proposed method. These results indicate that the proposed method is capable of providing more robust PD images with higher spatial resolution and higher contrast-to-noise ratio.
AB - Singular value decomposition-based clutter filters can robustly reject tissue clutter, allowing for detection of slow blood flow in imaging microvasculature. However, to identify microvessels, high ultrasound frequency must be used to increase the spatial resolution at the expense of shorter depth of penetration. Deconvolution using Tikhonov regularization is an imaging processing method widely used to improve spatial resolution. The ringing artifact of Tikhonov regularization, though, can produce image artifacts such as non-existent microvessels, which degrade image quality. Therefore, a deconvolution method using total variation is proposed in this study to improve spatial resolution and mitigate the ringing artifact. Performance of the proposed method was evaluated using chicken embryo brain, ex ovo chicken embryo chorioallantoic membrane and tumor data. Results revealed that the reconstructed power Doppler (PD) images are substantially improved in spatial resolution compared with original PD images: the full width half-maximum (FWHM) of the cross-sectional profile of a microvessel was improved from 132 to 83 µm. Two neighboring microvessels that were 154 µm apart were better separated using the proposed method than conventional PD imaging. Additionally, 223 FWHMs measured from the cross-sectional profiles of 223 vessels were used to determine the improvement in FWHM with the proposed method statistically. The mean ± standard deviation of the FWHM without and with the proposed method was 233.19 ± 85.08 and 172.31 ± 75.11 μm, respectively; the maximum FWHM without and with the proposed method was 693.01 and 668.69 μm; and the minimum FWHM without and with the proposed method was 73.92 and 45.74 μm. There were statistically significant differences between FWHMs with and without the proposed method according to the rank-sum test, p < 0.0001. The contrast-to-noise ratio improved from 1.06 to 4.03 dB with use of the proposed method. We also compared the proposed method with Tikhonov regularization using ex ovo chicken embryo chorioallantoic membrane data. We found that the proposed method outperformed Tikhonov regularization as false microvessels appeared using the Tikhonov regularization but not with the proposed method. These results indicate that the proposed method is capable of providing more robust PD images with higher spatial resolution and higher contrast-to-noise ratio.
KW - Deconvolution
KW - Microvessel imaging
KW - Power Doppler imaging
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U2 - 10.1016/j.ultrasmedbio.2020.12.025
DO - 10.1016/j.ultrasmedbio.2020.12.025
M3 - Article
C2 - 33468358
AN - SCOPUS:85099586660
SN - 0301-5629
VL - 47
SP - 1089
EP - 1098
JO - Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology
JF - Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology
IS - 4
ER -