High frequency image-based flow detection

Tumour angiogenesis refers to neovascular development on a microvascular scale and is an early indicator of cancer. Prototype high frequency pulsed Doppler systems using 50 MHz transducers have been reported to detect microvascular flow in vessels 0.02 mm to 0.5 mm in diameter at superficial depths of 0.5 mm. Detecting flow in microvasculature at deeper depths requires lower frequency transducers with a resulting tradeoff in spatial resolution. Using a 22 MHz transducer, we demonstrate a speckle decorrelation technique to detect in vitro flow in soft tubing of 0.5 mm diameter at a depth of 2 cm. This image-based decorrelation technique is capable of detecting flow in significantly narrower diameters down to 0.125 mm by decreasing the region of interest.