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A Comparison of the Sensitivity of Contrast-Specific Imaging Modes on Clinical and Preclinical Ultrasound Scanners.

Carmel M MoranCharles ArthurEmilio Quaia
Published in: Tomography (Ann Arbor, Mich.) (2022)
Ultrasonic contrast agents are used routinely to aid clinical diagnosis. All premium- and mid-range scanners utilise contrast-specific imaging techniques to preferentially isolate and display the nonlinear signals generated from the microbubbles when insonated with a series of ultrasound pulses. In this manuscript the abilities of four premium ultrasound scanners to detect and display the ultrasound signal from two commercially available contrast agents-SonoVue and DEFINITY ® -are compared. A flow phantom was built using tubes with internal diameters of 1.6 mm and 3.2 mm, suspended at depths of 1, 5 and 8 cm and embedded in tissue-mimicking material. Dilute solutions of SonoVue and DEFINITY ® were pumped through the phantom at 0.25 mL/s and 1.5 mL/s. Four transducers were used to scan the tubes-a GE Logiq E9 (C2-9) curvilinear probe, a Philips iU22 L9-3 linear array probe, an Esaote MyLab Twice linear array LA523 (4-13 MHz) and a Fujifilm VisualSonics Vevo3100 MX250 (15-30 MHz) linear array probe. We defined a new parameter to compare the ability of the ultrasound scanners to display the contrast enhancement. This was defined as the ratio of grey-scale intensity ratio in contrast-specific imaging mode relative to the B-mode intensity from the same region-of-interest within the corresponding B-mode image. The study demonstrated that the flow rates used in this study had no effect on the contrast-specific imaging mode to B-mode (CSIM-BM) ratio for the three clinical scanners studied, with SonoVue demonstrating broadly similar CSIM-BM ratios across all 3 clinical scanners. DEFINITY ® also displayed similar results to SonoVue except when insonated with the Esaote MyLab Twice LA523 transducer, where it demonstrated significantly higher CSIM-BM ratios at superficial depths.
Keyphrases
  • high resolution
  • magnetic resonance
  • magnetic resonance imaging
  • contrast enhanced
  • computed tomography
  • ultrasound guided
  • quantum dots
  • stem cells
  • high intensity
  • machine learning
  • deep learning
  • white matter
  • single cell