Comparative analysis of clutter filtering techniques on freehand micro-Doppler ultrasound imaging

Abstract

Micro-Doppler (µDoppler) ultrasound imaging is a high frame rate ultrasound imaging modality that provides high spatiotemporal resolution ultrasound images of blood flow. It is sensitive to slow blood flow and particularly suitable for capturing fast-changing phenomena like rapid blood flow. Clutter filtering is an essential step in µDoppler data processing to reject tissue clutter signals and keep blood flow information as much as possible. 3D freehand µDoppler imaging is an emerging ultrasound technique that can construct full spatial vasculature images with a panoramic view that conventional 2D ultrasound is not able to provide. As freehand implies the continuous and nonuniform movement of the probe, it becomes more challenging for clutter filtering to acquire high-quality images.

This thesis explores and compares different state-of-art clutter filtering techniques on freehand in-vivo µDoppler imaging of the human brain. Specifically, Singular Value Decomposition (SVD), Robust Principle Component Analysis (Robust PCA), and Independent Component Analysis (ICA) clutter filtering techniques have been investigated. The aim is to test and compare their performance on in-vivo µDoppler ultrasound data with freehand probe movement and understand how freehand motion affects the threshold selection criteria. Besides that, a newly proposed method that combines ICA clutter filtering and clustering is included in this thesis to bring another perspective for sorting independent components corresponding to blood flow and rejecting unwanted ones consisting mostly of tissue clutter signals.