Non-invasive estimation of blood pressure using ultrasound contrast agents

Local blood pressure measurements provide important information on the state of health of organs in the body and can be used to diagnose diseases in the heart, lungs, and kidneys. This paper presents an experimental setup for investigating the ambient pressure sensitivity of a contrast agent using diagnostic ultrasound. The setup resembles a realistic clinical setup utilizing a single array transducer for transmit and receive. The ambient pressure sensitivity of SonoVue (Bracco, Milano, Italy) was measured twice using two different acoustic driving pressures, which were selected based on a preliminary experiment. To compensate for variations in bubble response and to make the estimates more robust, the relation between the energy of the subharmonic and the fundamental component was chosen as a measure over the subharmonic peak amplitude. The preliminary study revealed the growth stage of the subharmonic component to occur at acoustic driving pressures between 300 and 500 kPa. Based on this, the pressure sensitivity was investigated using a driving pressure of 485 and 500 kPa. At 485 kPa, a linear pressure sensitivity of 0.42 dB/kPa was found having a linear correlation coefficient of 0.94. The second measurement series at 485 kPa showed a sensitivity of 0.41 dB/kPa with a correlation coefficient of 0.89. Based on the measurements at 500 kPa, this acoustic driving pressure was concluded to be too high causing the bubbles to be destroyed. The pressure sensitivity for these two measurement series were 0.42 and 0.25 dB/kPa with linear correlation coefficients of 0.98 and 0.93, respectively.