Enhanced visualization of intratumoral microbubbles using singular value thresholding combined with normalized singular spectrum area

Ultrasound molecular imaging is a powerful diagnostic ultrasound imaging technique which has potential to enhance diagnosis of cancer and other vascular diseases. However, USMI is hampered by the presence of nonlinear artifacts from static tissue signals as well as the lack of non-destructive techniques to quantify adherent microbubble signals. In this study, singular value thresholding (SVT) and normalized singular spectrum area (NSSA) are used simultaneously to enable a filtering technique which automatically suppresses static tissue signals and differentiates between adherent and non-adherent MB signals.