Ultrafast ultrasound coded vector Doppler imaging of blood flow velocity and resistivity

Abstract: Dynamic and precise measurement of cerebral blood flow velocity is crucial in neuroscience and the diagnosis of cerebrovascular diseases. Traditional color Doppler ultrasound can only measure the velocity component along the ultrasound beam, which restricts its ability to accurately capture the complete blood flow vector in complex environments. To overcome these limitations, we propose an ultrafast pulse-coded vector Doppler (PC-UVD) imaging method, utilizing Hadamard matrix-based pulse encoding to improve velocity estimation accuracy under low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) conditions. Our study encompasses spiral flow simulations and in vivo rat brain experiments, showing significantly enhanced measurement precision compared to conventional ultrafast vector Doppler (UVD). This innovative approach enables the measurement of dynamic cerebral blood flow velocity within a single cardiac cycle, offering insights into the characteristics of cerebrovascular resistivity. The proposed PC-UVD method employs Hadamard matrix encoding of plane waves, boosting SNR without compromising temporal or spatial resolution. Velocity vectors are subsequently estimated using a weighted least squares (WLS) approach, with iterative residual-based weight optimization improving robustness to noise and minimizing the impact of outliers. The effectiveness of this technique is confirmed through simulations with a spiral blood flow phantom, demonstrating a marked improvement in velocity estimation accuracy, particularly in deep imaging regions with significant signal attenuation. In vivo experiments on rat brains further confirm that the proposed method offers greater accuracy than existing UVD approaches, particularly for small vessels. Notably, our method can precisely differentiate arterial from venous flow by analyzing pulsatility and resistivity within the cerebral vascular network.