Search arXivSearch

arXiv · 2209.10650

Phase Aberration Correction for in vivo Ultrasound Localization Microscopy Using a Spatiotemporal Complex-Valued Neural Network

Abstract

Ultrasound Localization Microscopy (ULM) can map microvessels at a resolution of a few micrometers (μm). Transcranial ULM remains challenging in presence of aberrations caused by the skull, which lead to localization errors. Herein, we propose a deep learning approach based on complex-valued convolutional neural networks (CV-CNNs) to retrieve the aberration function, which can then be used to form enhanced images using standard delay-and-sum beamforming. CV-CNNs were selected as they can apply time delays through multiplication with in-phase quadrature input data. Predicting the aberration function rather than corrected images also confers enhanced explainability to the network. In addition, 3D spatiotemporal convolutions were used for the network to leverage entire microbubble tracks. For training and validation, we used an anatomically and hemodynamically realistic mouse brain microvascular network model to simulate the flow of microbubbles in presence of aberration. The proposed CV-CNN performance was compared to the coherence-based method by using microbubble tracks. We then confirmed the capability of the proposed network to generalize to transcranial \textit{in vivo} data in the mouse brain (n=3). Vascular reconstructions using a locally predicted aberration function included additional and sharper vessels. The CV-CNN was more robust than the coherence-based method and could perform aberration correction in a 6-month-old mouse. After correction, we measured a resolution of 15.6 μm for younger mice, representing an improvement of 25.8 $\%$, while the resolution was improved by 13.9 $\%$ for the 6-month-old mouse. This work leads to different applications for complex-valued convolutions in biomedical imaging and strategies to perform transcranial ULM.

Explore related subjects

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

Paul Xing, Jonathan Porée, Brice Rauby, Antoine Malescot, Éric Martineau, Vincent Perrot, Ravi L. Rungta, Jean Provost. 2023-07-17. Phase Aberration Correction for in vivo Ultrasound Localization Microscopy Using a Spatiotemporal Complex-Valued Neural Network. https://doi.org/10.1109/tmi.2023.3316995

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

KELP: K-space-conditioned Estimation of Learned Sampling Patterns for Scan-Adaptive Multi-Coil MRI

Deep learning techniques have gained considerable attention for accelerating MRI acquisition while maintaining image quality. In this work, we present a convolutional neural network (CNN)-based framework for predicting scan-adaptive undersampling patterns directly from low-frequency multi-coil $k$-space data. Unlike approaches that optimize sampling patterns during training or rely on nearest-neighbor search at inference, our method is trained using precomputed scan-adaptive optimized masks as supervised labels and predicts a scan-specific sampling pattern in a single forward pass. The training procedure alternates between optimizing the sampling network and a reconstruction network, allowing the learned masks to adapt to reconstruction performance. Experiments on the fastMRI multi-coil knee dataset demonstrate competitive reconstruction quality compared with existing population- and scan-adaptive sampling approaches at $4\times$ and $8\times$ acceleration factors. In addition, the proposed method enables efficient scan-specific mask prediction with inference cost independent of the training dictionary size.

eess.IV

LaminoDiff: Generative Computed Laminography via Near-Isotropic Spectral Supervision and Anisotropic Geometry

Computed Laminography (CL) is widely used for nondestructive inspection of extended planar objects, but its restricted angular coverage produces an anisotropic point spread function, missing-cone spectral incompleteness, and severe aliasing with interlayer leakage. This paper presents LaminoDiff, a physics-constrained diffusion framework for CL reconstruction. During training, a CT-derived near-isotropic supervision target is reconstructed from full-angle Computed Tomography (CT) projections physically degraded to match CL detector noise and focal-spot blur while retaining full angular coverage; it is withheld from inference. At inference, the reverse process uses only the CL observation. An Anisotropic Representation (AR) constructs depth-aware channels from three adjacent slices: a neighbor average, a center-neighbor residual, and the retained current slice, followed by directional in-plane feature extraction. Experiments on simulated and real multilayer printed circuit board data, including ball grid array and high-frequency stub samples, show that LaminoDiff improves artifact suppression, edge preservation, and depth stratification over analytic Feldkamp--Davis--Kress and representative learning-based baselines.

eess.IV

IViT: A Novel Interpretable Visual Transformer for Skin Disease Detection

The clinical diagnosis of skin diseases is susceptible to interference from inter-class similarity of skin lesions, and over-reliance on clinicians'experience easily leads to subjective bias. Although existing deep learning aided diagnosis methods achieve competitive accuracy, they suffer from the black-box opacity of Vision Transformer (ViT) and poor adaptability to medical few-shot scenarios. Moreover, mainstream explainable algorithms generally face the bottleneck of significant accuracy degradation when improving interpretability. This paper proposes an interpretable ViT (IViT) constrained by Quadratic Programming (QP). The introduced pre-trained transfer learning adapts to few-shot feature extraction. A discrete QP feature selection framework is constructed to screen generic and discriminative features consistent with clinical diagnostic logic. A multi-objective loss function is designed to reduce feature redundancy and optimize activation distribution while preserving classification performance. Experimental results on six standard skin disease datasets show that IViT achieves an accuracy of 93.80%, only 0.21% lower than the baseline, with feature redundancy reduced by 29.5%. Its core activation regions are consistent with clinically concerned lesion areas. The proposed model balances accuracy and interpretability, providing a reliable solution for the clinical deployment of few-shot intelligent skin disease diagnosis.

eess.IV