Abstract
Ultrasonography is a major medical imaging technique that has been broadly applied in many disease diagnoses. However, due to strong aberration and scattering in the human skull, high-resolution transcranial ultrasonic imaging remains a grand challenge. Here, we explore the rotational-invariant property of ultrasonic speckle and develop high-resolution speckle-scanning ultrasonography to image sub-millimeter-sized features through thick bones. We experimentally validate the rotational invariance of ultrasonic speckle. Based on this property, we scan a random ultrasonic speckle pattern across an object sandwiched between two thick bones so that the object features can be encoded to the ultrasonic waves. After receiving the transmitted ultrasonic waves, we reconstruct the image of the object using an iterative phase retrieval algorithm. We successfully demonstrate imaging of hole and tube features sized as fine as several hundreds of microns between two 0.5 ~ 1-cm-thick bones. With 2.5-MHz excitation and the third-harmonic detection, we measure the spatial resolution as 352 µm. Rotational-invariant speckle-scanning ultrasonography offers a new approach to image through thick bones and paves an avenue towards high-resolution ultrasonic imaging of the human brain.
Highlights
Ultrasonography is a major medical imaging technique that has been broadly applied in many disease diagnoses
Due to strong aberration/multiple scattering in the thick skull, ultrasonography has not been extensively applied to the human brain
1D ultrasonic speckle patterns are detected by a 96-channel ultrasonic array transducer (P4-1, ATL)
Summary
Ultrasonography is a major medical imaging technique that has been broadly applied in many disease diagnoses. Rotational-invariant speckle-scanning ultrasonography offers a new approach to image through thick bones and paves an avenue towards high-resolution ultrasonic imaging of the human brain. Due to strong aberration/multiple scattering in the thick skull, ultrasonography has not been extensively applied to the human brain Several techniques, such as time-reversal[1,2], speckle b rightness[3,4], and pitch-catch m ethods[5], have been developed based on phase correction towards solving the aberration problem in the skull. Our finding may be related to van Cittert-Zernike (VCZ) theorem[12,13] Based on this property, we develop a new imaging technique, named rotational-invariant specklescanning ultrasonography, to acquire high-resolution ultrasonic images through thick bones
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