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Pulse Inversion Chirp Coded Tissue Harmonic Imaging (PI-CTHI) of Zebrafish Heart Using High Frame Rate Ultrasound Biomicroscopy

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Abstract

This paper reports a pulse inversion chirp coded tissue harmonic imaging (PI-CTHI) method for visualizing small animal hearts that provides fine spatial resolution at a high frame rate without sacrificing the echo signal to noise ratio (eSNR). A 40 MHz lithium niobate (LiNbO3) single element transducer is employed to evaluate the performance of PI-CTHI by scanning tungsten wire targets, spherical anechoic voids, and zebrafish hearts. The wire phantom results show that PI-CTHI improves the eSNR by 4 dB from that of conventional pulse inversion tissue harmonic imaging (PI-THI), while still maintaining a spatial resolution of 88 and 110 μm in the axial and lateral directions, respectively. The range side lobe level of PI-CTHI is 11 dB lower than that of band-pass filtered CTHI (or F-CTHI). In the anechoic sphere phantom study, the contrast-to-noise ratio of PI-CTHI is found to be 2.7, indicating a 34% enhancement over conventional PI-THI. Due to such improved eSNR and contrast resolution, blood clots in zebrafish hearts can be readily visualized throughout heart regeneration after 20% of the ventricle is removed. Disappearance of the clots in the early stages of the regeneration has been observed for 7 days without sacrificing the fish.

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Acknowledgment

This work has been supported by NIH Grants R01-HL79976 and P41-EB2182 and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MEST) (No. 2012R1A1A1015778).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. NIH Resource on Medical Ultrasonic Transducer Technology, Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Southern California, 1042 Downey Way, University Park, DRB125, Los Angeles, CA, 90089, USA

    Jinhyoung Park, Ruimin Chen, Thomas M. Cummins, Qifa Zhou & K. K. Shung

  2. Saban Research Institute, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, 90027, USA

    Ying Huang & Ching-Ling Lien

  3. Department of Surgery, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, 90033, USA

    Ching-Ling Lien

  4. Department of Electronic Engineering, Kwangwoon University, Seoul, Korea

    Jungwoo Lee

Authors
  1. Jinhyoung Park
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  2. Ying Huang
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  3. Ruimin Chen
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  4. Jungwoo Lee
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  5. Thomas M. Cummins
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  6. Qifa Zhou
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  7. Ching-Ling Lien
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  8. K. K. Shung
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Correspondence to Jinhyoung Park.

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Associate Editor Jeffrey L. Duerk oversaw the review of this article.

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Park, J., Huang, Y., Chen, R. et al. Pulse Inversion Chirp Coded Tissue Harmonic Imaging (PI-CTHI) of Zebrafish Heart Using High Frame Rate Ultrasound Biomicroscopy. Ann Biomed Eng 41, 41–52 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10439-012-0636-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10439-012-0636-y

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