IN VIVO BLOOD VELOCITY VECTOR IMAGING USING ADAPTIVE VELOCITY COMPOUNDING IN THE CAROTID ARTERY BIFURCATION

Visualization and quantification of blood flow are considered important for early detection of atherosclerosis and patient-specific diagnosis and intervention. As conventional Doppler imaging is limited to 1-D velocity estimates, 2-D and 3-D techniques are being developed. We introduce an adaptive velocity compounding technique that estimates the 2-D velocity vector field using predominantly axial displacements estimated by speckle tracking from dual-angle plane wave acquisitions. Straight-vessel experiments with a 7.8-MHz linear array transducer connected to a Verasonics Vantage ultrasound system revealed that the technique performed with a maximum velocity magnitude bias and angle bias of 3.7% (2.8% standard deviation) and -0.16 degrees (0.41 degrees standard deviation), respectively. In vivo, complex flow patterns were visualized in two healthy and three diseased carotid arteries and quantified using a vector complexity measure that increased with increasing wall irregularity. This measure could potentially be a relevant clinical parameter which might aid in early detection of atherosclerosis. (E-mail: Anne.Saris@radboudumc.nl) (C) 2019 World Federation for Ultrasound in Medicine & Biology. All rights reserved.