Candidate: Rebekah Maffett
Title: Towards high-volume-rate 3D ultrasound for volumetric blood flow measurements
Date: June 19, 2023
Time: 3:00 PM
Place: EIT 3142
Supervisor(s): Yu, Alfred
Abstract:
Volumetric blood flow (VBF) is a quantitative hemodynamic metric has been linked to numerous diseases in the vasculature, heart, brain, liver, and kidneys. Despite its potential diagnostic utility, VBF is not widely available as it is challenging to derive. 3D ultrasound imaging is a promising modality for VBF measurements, yet the current technology is hindered by high-channel-counts (1000+) and low volume rate imaging (1-20Hz) preventing its adoption. To address these challenges, channel count reduction strategies (e.g., sparse arrays) can be coupled with broad-view transmissions (e.g., plane waves). However, these solutions come with side-effects (e.g., signal loss) that must be studied and mitigated.
This seminar will present research towards the realization 3D ultrasound for application to VBF measurements including: 1) signal enhancement for flow estimation, 2) assessing the viability of sparse arrays for broad-view imaging, 3) investigating the impact of transmission schemes on 3D vector flow imaging accuracy, and 4) evaluating VBF estimation performance from 3D flow vectors. Altogether, the research presented here provides essential steppingstones to reliable, accessible, and non-invasive VBF measurements using 3D ultrasound.