Flow Quantification with Nakagami Parametric Imaging for Suppressing Contrast Microbubbles Attenuation

Flow quantification with contrast-enhanced ultrasound is still limited by the effects of contrast microbubble attenuation. Nakagami parametric imaging (NPI) based on the m parameter, which is related to the statistical property of echo envelope, is implemented to suppress contrast attenuation. Flow velocity (FV) and volumetric flow rate (VFR) are estimated through the least square fitting of burst depletion kinetic model to time m parameter curves (TMCs). A non-recirculating flow phantom is imaged as contrast microbubbles are infused at 10, 15, 20, 25, and 30 mL/min. Contrast microbubbles with two different concentrations are used to generate variations of contrast microbubble attenuation. The results suggest that 4 × 4 mm² is the optimal size of a sliding window of NPI for flow quantification under current experiment condition. At a lower microbubble concentration, the FV calculated from TMCs correlates strongly with actual FV in both unattenuated (R² = 0.97; p < 0.01) and attenuated regions (R² = 0.92; p < 0.01) within phantom. And there is a strong correlation (R² = 0.98; p < 0.01; slope = 0.96; intercept = 0.68) between VFR calculated from TMCs and actual VFR within the whole phantom. Similar results are obtained at higher microbubble concentrations. Compared with conventional ultrasound imaging that is intensity dependent, NPI achieves better performance on flow quantification in the presence of contrast microbubble attenuation.