Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research

International Business Machines Corporation

Armando Manduca

Joshua D Trzasko

Richard L Ehman

Shigao Chen

Pengfei Song

James Fowler Greenleaf

Kiaran P McGee

Joel P Felmlee

Matthew W Urban

C Daniel Johnson

Michael J Carston

David S Lake

Jeffrey S McAllister

Cynthia H McCollough

Lifeng Yu

Nelson Ramirez

Edward Brian Welch

Shuai Leng

Zhoubo Li

Joel G Fletcher

John Huston, Iii

Kevin J Glaser

Daniel C Mellema

Matthew C Murphy

Robert J Wentz

Jonathan M Scott

Matthew A Bernstein

Timothy John Mullins

Carolina Amador Carrascal

Yunhong Shu

Heng Zhao

Meng Yin

Clifford R Jack, Jr

Yogesh K Mariappan

Arvin Forghanian-Arani

Juan C Ramirez Giraldo

Roger C Grimm

Bogdan Dzyubak

Chengwu Huang

Randall Kinnick

Jayant A Talwalkar

Anthony J Romano

Shanshan Tang

Arunark Kolipaka

Iii John Huston

Matthew Lowerison

John Huston Iii

Systems and methods for removing the bias induced by noise from power Doppler images to achieve improvements of microvessel image contrast are provided. In one example, the noise-induced bias can be suppressed by utilizing the characteristics of uncorrelated noise in the ultrasound image from data acquired or compounded at different transmitting angles. In another example, the noise-induced bias can be suppressed due to the lack of correlation between adjacent ultrasound images. These example implementations may also be combined, as will be described below.

Systems and methods for removing noise-induced bias in ultrasound blood flow imaging

Systems and methods for processing data acquired using ultrasound elastography, in which shear waves are generated in a subject using continuous vibration of an ultrasound transducer, are provided. The systems and methods described here can effectively remove motion artifacts associated with vibration of the ultrasound transducer, and can also remove the data sampling misalignment caused when a line-by-line imaging mode is used to acquire data, as is done by many conventional ultrasound scanners. Thus, the systems and methods described here provide techniques for transducer motion correction and for aligning motion signals detected by line-by-line scanning ultrasound systems.

Systems and methods for ultrasound elastography with continuous transducer vibration

In accordance with some embodiments, systems, methods, and media for estimating a mechanical property based on a transformation of magnetic resonance elastography (MRE) data using a trained artificial neural network are provided. In some embodiments, a system is provided, the system comprising: a hardware processor programmed to: receive displacement data of tissue in vivo; provide the displacement data to a trained ANN that was trained using noisy input datasets as training data, and derivative datasets corresponding to the noisy input datasets to evaluate performance during training, such that the trained ANN provides an output dataset corresponding to an analytical solution to a derivative of a function represented in an unlabeled input dataset thereby transforming the unlabeled input dataset into its derivative; receive, from the trained ANN, an output dataset indicative of a derivative of the displacement data; and estimate stiffness of the tissue based on the derivative.

Systems, methods, and media for estimating a mechanical property based on a transformation of magnetic resonance elastography data using a trained artificial neural network

Described here are systems and methods for super-resolution imaging with ultrasound in which a Kalman filter-based microvessel inpainting technique is used to facilitate robust super-resolution imaging with limited or otherwise missing microbubble signals. The systems and methods described in the present disclosure can be combined with both local and global microbubble tracking methods.

Systems and methods for Kalman filter-based microvessel inpainting for super-resolution imaging

Systems and methods for performing shear wave elastography using push and/or detection ultrasound beams that are generated by subsets of the available number of transducer elements in an ultrasound transducer. These techniques provide several advantages over currently available approaches to shear wave elastography, including the ability to use a standard, low frame rate ultrasound imaging system and the ability to measure shear wave speed throughout the entire field-of-view rather than only those regions where the push beams are not generated.

System and method for shear wave elastography by transmitting ultrasound with subgroups of ultrasound transducer elements

Methods for processing data acquired using ultrasound elastography, in which shear waves are generated in a subject using continuous vibration of the ultrasound transducer, are described. The described methods can effectively separate shear wave signals from signals corresponding to residual motion artifacts associated with vibration of the ultrasound transducer. The systems and methods described here also provide for real-time visualization of shear waves propagating in the subject.

Shear wave elastography with ultrasound probe oscillation

Systems and methods for super-resolution ultrasound imaging of microvessels in a subject are described. Ultrasound data are acquired from a region-of-interest in a subject who has been administered a microbubble contrast agent. The ultrasound data are acquired while the microbubbles are moving through, or otherwise present in, the region-of-interest. The region-of-interest may include, for instance, microvessels or other microvascuiature in the subject. By isolating, localizing, tracking, and accumulating the microbubbles in the ultrasound data, super-resolution images of the microvessels can be generated.

Methods for super-resolution ultrasound imaging of microvessels

Magnetic resonance elastography ('MRE'), or other imaging-based elastography techniques, generate estimates of the mechanical properties, such as stiffness and damping ratio, of tissues in a subject. A machine learning approach, such as an artificial neural network, is implemented to perform an inversion of displacement data in order to generate the estimates of the mechanical properties.

Methods for estimating mechanical properties from magnetic resonance elastography data using artificial neural networks

Described here are systems and methods for imaging blood flow in a subject's vasculature, which may include small blood vessels, using ultrasound without the need for a contrast agent. A locally implemented low-rank matrix decomposition is used together with adaptive cutoff values to provide noninvasive ultrasound blood flow imaging capable of imaging the subject's vasculature with very high spatial and temporal resolution, and without the administration of contrast agents such as microbubble contrast agents. Thus, in some instances the systems and methods can be used to image blood flow in small vessels and tissue microvasculature with high spatial and temporal resolution.

Ultrasound blood flow imaging

System and methods are provided for producing computed tomography (CT) images. In some aspects, a method includes obtaining medical image data sets acquired using the multiple energies of irradiating radiation and analyzing the medical image data sets for spatial and spectral features. The method also includes comparing the spatial and spectral features of the medical image data sets to identify similarities and using the similarities, weighting the medical image data sets to generate images of the subject having reduced noise compared to images of the subject produced from the medical image data sets without weighting.

System and method for controlling noise in multi-energy computed tomography images based on spatio-spectral information

Described here are systems and methods for estimating shear wave velocity from data acquired with a shear wave elastography system. More particularly, the systems and methods described here implement a spatiotemporal time-to-peak algorithm that searches for the times at which shear wave motion is at a maximum while also searching for the lateral locations at which shear wave motion is at a maximum. Motion can include displacement, velocity, or acceleration caused by propagating shear waves. A fitting procedure (e.g., a linear fit) is performed on a combined set of these temporal peaks and spatial peaks to estimate the shear wave velocity, from which mechanical properties can be computed. Motion amplitude thresholding can also be used to increase the number of points for the fitting.

Shear wave group velocity estimation using spatiotemporal peaks and amplitude thresholding

Methods for measuring mechanical properties of an object or subject under examination with an ultrasound system and using unfocused ultrasound energy are provided. Shear waves that propagate in the object or subject are produced by applying unfocused ultrasound energy to the object or subject, and measurement data is acquired by applying focused or unfocused ultrasound energy to at least one location in the object or subject at which shear waves are present Mechanical properties are then calculated from the acquired measurement data.

Ultrasound vibrometry with unfocused ultrasound

A system and method for estimating a physiological parameter from data acquired with a medical imaging system includes acquiring data with the medical imaging system. A physiological parameter is estimated from the acquired data using an iterative estimation in which a model of the medical imaging system is decoupled from a physics-based model of the acquired data.

System and method for model-based reconstruction of quantitative images

A system and method for generating a spatial map of parameters that describe the mechanically-induced harmonic motion information present within a magnetic resonance elastography (MRE) data set is provided. A first temporal harmonic signal is estimated using a graph-cut based optimization strategy, and can subsequently be used to generate a spatial map of mechanical parameters. The MRE data set is used to estimate the harmonic. The spatial map is of a mechanical parameter derived from the estimated harmonic.

System and method for generating spatial maps of mechanical parameters using graph-cut based optimization

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Rochester, MN, United States of America

Armando Manduca