Quantitative myocardial perfusion analysis with contrast-enhanced ultrasound bolus tracking - preliminary animal results

This study aims at absolute quantification in ultra-sound perfusion analysis in vivo. The main task of the study is to apply a perfusion model for intravascular tracers known mainly from other modalities to ultrasound perfusion analysis. Parametric formulation of the tissue residual function is proposed. Three perfusion parameters - blood flow, blood volume and mean transit time are estimated. The method is tested on preclinical data acquired from pig's heart and compared with reference blood flow values obtained using fluorescent microspheres. A fairly good match between ultrasound perfusion and the reference method was achieved.