Adipose tissue imaging using ultrasound pulse subtraction cancellation ratio

R. Andrew Fowler , Jean-Martial Mari (1) , Emmanuelle Canet-Soulas (2) , Cyril Lafon (1)

1 LabTAU - Application des ultrasons à la thérapie
2 UCBL - Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1

Non-linear Ultrasound imaging has been used extensively for enhancing the visualization of the accumulation of micro-bubble contrast agents. The goal of this study is to apply this approach to adipose tissue, a tissue type with a high non-linear coefficient, in order to enhance the visibility of visceral adipose tissue depots using ultrasound. The technique used in this study was pulse subtraction. This technique, implemented on an Ultrasonix RP 500 scanner with a 5 MHz centre frequency probe, is based on taking a single pulse Bb-mode image, then constructing a virtual image for a two pulse b-mode image, then subtracting this virtual image from an actual two-pulse b-mode image. The imaging parameters were first optimized using both oil-based, and aqueous gel phantoms. The parameters were tested ex vivo using a section of pork belly, then the protocol was used in vivo to image the retroperitoneal fat depot on a healthy wistar rat. The ratio of cancellation for each pixel was then calculated and mapped. It was found that tissues with higher non-linear coefficients had a lower cancellation ratio.

Mots clés: pulse subtraction; adipose tissue; non-linear; imaging

Domaines: Acoustique [physics.class-ph]

R. Andrew Fowler, Jean-Martial Mari, Emmanuelle Canet-Soulas, Cyril Lafon. Adipose tissue imaging using ultrasound pulse subtraction cancellation ratio. Acoustics 2012, Apr 2012, Nantes, France. ⟨hal-00811326⟩