Charlotte Nawijn, Ph.D. candidate at the University of Twente, has developed a new technique to improve ultrasound images of blood flow.
Using a smart ultrasound pulse train, she reduced noise in contrast ultrasound images. Nawijn obtained her Ph.D.
on this subject on 24 October with the defense of her dissertation "Bubbles and Waves for Ultrasound Imaging and Therapy." Microbubbles are tiny bubbles, smaller than red blood cells , that can be injected into the bloodstream as a contrast agent for ultrasound diagnostics. This helps doctors to visualize the blood flow (or lack thereof) to organs, such as the heart and large blood vessels.
Previous research has shown that emitting two pulse trains of ultrasound can greatly reduce the amount of noise in the ultrasound image, but this method did not work for contrast bubbles or rapid blood flow. Charlotte Nawijn developed a technique to transmit and analyze this pulse train more effectively, enabling its use for contrast ultrasound of rapid blood flow. Thanks to her new technique, the contrast of the ultrasound images is increased and the amount of noise is reduced, which greatly improves the image quality .
This technique opens up completely new possibilities in the diagnosis of cardiovascular diseases. Calculated breaks This clever approach takes advantage of the ability to time the pulses separately. Nawijn developed a method that calculates the optimal timing between pulses to get the best result.
Instead of a regular series of.