Cardiac flow mapping using high frame rate diverging wave contrast enhanced ultrasound and image tracking

Contrast echocardiography (CE) ultrasound with microbubble contrast agents have significantly advanced our capability in assessing cardiac function. However in conventional CE techniques with line by line scanning, the frame rate is limited to tens of frames per second, making it difficult to track the fast flow within cardiac chamber. Recent research in high frame-rate (HFR) ultrasound have shown significant improvement of the frame rate in non-contrast cardiac imaging. In this work we show the feasibility of microbubbles flow tracking in HFR CE acquisition in vivo with a high temporal resolution and low MI as well as the detection of vortex near the valves during filling phases agreeing with previous study.