Label-free super-resolution color flow imaging using ultrasound phase microscopy

TL;DR

This paper introduces ultrasound phase microscopy (UPM), a novel label-free super-resolution imaging technique that significantly improves spatial resolution and acquisition speed for vascular imaging without requiring contrast agents.

Contribution

The paper presents UPM, a new phase-based ultrasound method achieving sub-wavelength resolution and faster imaging, overcoming limitations of existing label-free super-resolution techniques.

Findings

Achieves spatial resolution better than 5 micrometers

Improves data acquisition speed by nearly 100 times

Validated across multiple species, organs, and platforms

Abstract

Ultrasound vascular imaging is limited by acoustic diffraction, restricting visualization of microvessels essential for understanding organ function and disease. Label-free super-resolution methods exploiting endogenous red blood cells have faced challenges in acquisition time and complexity. Here we introduce ultrasound phase microscopy (UPM), a label-free technique that achieves sub-wavelength resolution flow imaging by exploiting phase differences between consecutively beamformed frames with mismatched apodizations, without requiring localization or tracking. Validated in vivo across multiple species, organs, and ultrasound platforms, UPM attains spatial resolutions better than 5 um up to tenfold improvement over conventional color flow imaging while accelerating data acquisition by nearly two orders of magnitude compared to ultrasound localization microscopy. UPM enables rapid, high resolution vascular imaging and offers a practical approach for label-free super-resolution vascular imaging.