High-resolution Power Doppler Using Null Subtraction Imaging

To improve the spatial resolution of power Doppler (PD) imaging, we explored null subtraction imaging (NSI) as an alternative beamforming technique to delay-and-sum (DAS). NSI is a nonlinear beamforming approach that uses three different apodizations on receive and incoherently sums the beamformed envelopes. NSI uses a null in the beam pattern to improve the lateral resolution, which we apply here for improving PD spatial resolution both with and without contrast microbubbles. In this study, we used NSI with singular value decomposition (SVD)-based clutter filtering and noise equalization to generate high-resolution PD images. An element sensitivity correction scheme was also performed to further improve the image quality of PD images using NSI. First, a microbubble trace experiment was performed to quantitatively evaluate the performance of NSI based PD. Then, both contrast-enhanced and contrast free ultrasound data were collected from a rat brain. Higher spatial resolution and image quality were observed from the NSI-based PD microvessel images compared to microvessel images generated by traditional DAS-based beamforming.