IEEE transactions on medical imaging
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IEEE Trans Med Imaging · Dec 2021
XDoppler: cross-correlation of orthogonal apertures for 3D blood flow imaging.
Row column addressing (RCA) transducers have the potential to provide volumetric imaging at ultrafast frame rate using a low channel count over a large field of view. In previous works we have shown that vascular imaging of large arteries as well as functional neuroimaging of the rat brain were feasible using RCA orthogonal plane wave imaging (OPW), but these applications required to transmit many plane waves, significantly reducing the frame rate. ⋯ Then, we demonstrate both in vitro and in vivo in the human carotid artery and in the rat brain that XDoppler provides a significant gain in contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) (between 3 and 6 dB depending on the application) compared to OPW. This improvement also leads to a sensitivity increase in the rat brain as more blood vessels are detected by XDoppler imaging.