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                    pp. 4047-4059 S&M2068 Research Paper of Special Issue https://doi.org/10.18494/SAM.2019.2382 Published: December 6, 2019 High-frequency Ultrasound Detection Technique with Contrast Agents [PDF] Jian-Xing Wu, Kuei-Hsiang Chao, Hsiang-Yueh Lai, Jian-Hung Liu, Howard Chung, and Hsiao-Chuan Liu (Received March 20, 2019; Accepted October 18, 2019) Keywords: chirp, ultrasound, microbubble, contrast agents, imaging 
                        High-frequency ultrasound with contrast agents provides contrast enhancement for imaging, has potential for application to drug delivery, and enables local genomics research.  However, high-frequency ultrasound has a significant limitation, the achievable signal-to-noise ratio (SNR)and depth of penetration.  In this study, we developed a new ultrasound system that involves chirp-coded-excitation ultrasound imaging with chirped pulses as trigger signals and a cardinal frequency of 30 MHz.  A chirp is a coded signal that linearly spans a frequency bandwidth B = f2−f1, where f1 and f2 are the starting and ending frequencies, respectively.  A new chirped pulses with contrast agents to minimize the attenuation of energy in human tissues increased the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) by 20 dB for high-frequency ultrasonic flow imaging of the heart of zebrafish and increased the penetration depth to 2.2 mm with pulse compression and a handmade expander.  On the other hand, in a microbubble experiment, adopting various  echo signal concentrations resulted in the desired distribution of different types of microbubbles.  Using the system we developed, we experimentally demonstrated that the chirp-coded excitation reduces the SNR by about 43 dB compared with unipolar and bipolar pulse excitations.  Corresponding author: Jian-Xing Wu   This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Cite this article Jian-Xing Wu, Kuei-Hsiang Chao, Hsiang-Yueh Lai, Jian-Hung Liu, Howard Chung, and Hsiao-Chuan Liu, High-frequency Ultrasound Detection Technique with Contrast Agents, Sens. Mater., Vol. 31, No. 12, 2019, p. 4047-4059. |