3D Functional Ultrasound using a Continuously Moving Linear Stage

Functional ultrasound (fUS) makes use of high frame-rate Power Doppler Images to measure a proxy for neuronal activity through the mechanism of neurovascular coupling. Whole-brain 3D fUS is typically achieved by concatenating 2D functional images obtained by repeated functional experiments, resulting in very long recordings. Only a few works have accomplished 3D fUS using a fully wired 2D matrix array. This method requires expensive hardware and suffers from low sensitivity attributed to the relatively small element sizes used. We propose moving a 1d-array transducer continuously back-and-forth over the brain volume using a motorized linear stage during a functional experiment, resulting in a full 3D Power Doppler reconstruction for every pass-over that can be used for functional analysis.