Microvascular flow estimation by microbubble-assisted Nakagami imaging.

The destruction and replenishment of microbubbles has been previously applied to estimating blood flow in the microcirculation. The rate of increase of the time-intensity curve (TIC) due to microbubbles flowing into the region-of-interest (ROI) as measured from the conventional B-mode images reflects the flow velocity. In this study, we monitored microbubble replenishment using a new proposed approach called the time-Nakagami-parameter curve (TNC) obtained from the parametric image based on the Nakagami statistical parameter for quantifying the microvascular flow velocity. The Nakagami parameter is estimated from signal envelope to reflect the backscattered statistics. The feasibility of using the TNC to estimate the microvascular flow was explored by carrying out phantom measurements and in vivo animal experiments. The rates of increase of the TIC and TNC were quantified as the rate constants beta(I) and beta(N) of monoexponential fitted curves, respectively. The experimental results showed that beta(N) behaves similarly to the conventional beta(I) in quantifying the flow velocity. Moreover, the tolerance to the effects of clutter is greater for the TNC than for the TIC, which makes it possible to use beta(N) to differentiate various flow velocities even when the ROI contains nonperfused areas. This finding suggests that the TNC-based technique can be used as a complementary tool for the conventional TIC to improve measurement of blood flow in the microcirculation.