SURF imaging for ultrasound contrast agents

Objectives: Ultrasound contrast bubbles are true blood pool agents that can be used for improved diagnosis in many clinical situations. However, current contrast agent detection methods have some fundamental limitations reducing the applicability of contrast-enhanced ultrasound. Available methods rely on driving the contrast bubbles into strong nonlinear oscillations by the imaging pulse limiting the imaging frequency and hence spatial image resolution. Current methods utilize only a fraction of the scattered contrast agent signal where the received linear part is suppressed to suppress tissue hence limiting the…