Determining the utility of ultrafast nonlinear contrast enhanced and super resolution ultrasound for imaging microcirculation in the human small intestine
Clotilde Vié, Martina Tashkova, James Burn, Matthieu Toulemonde, Jipeng Yan, Jingwen Zhu, Cameron A. B Smith, Biao Huang, Su Yan, Kevin G Murphy, …
The regulation of intestinal blood flow is critical to gastrointestinal function. Imaging the intestinal mucosal micro-circulation in vivo has the potential to provide new insight into the gut physiology and pathophysiology. We aimed to determine whether ultrafast contrast enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) and super-resolution ultrasound localisation microscopy (SRUS/ULM) could be a useful tool for imaging the small intestine microcirculation in vivo non-invasively and for detecting changes in blood flow in the duodenum. Ultrafast CEUS and SRUS/ULM were used to image the small intestinal microcirculation in a cohort of 20 healthy volunteers (BMI<25). Participants were imaged while conscious and either having been fasted, or following ingestion of a liquid meal or water control, or under acute stress. For the first time we have performed ultrafast CEUS and ULM on the human small intestine, providing unprecedented resolution images of the intestinal microcirculation. We evaluated flow speed inside small vessels in healthy volunteers (2.78 +/- 0.05 mm/s, mean +/- SEM) and quantified changes in the perfusion of this microcirculation in response to nutrient ingestion. Perfusion of the microvasculature of the intestinal mucosa significantly increased post-prandially (36.2% +/- 12.2%, mean +/- SEM, p<0.05). The feasibility of 3D SRUS/ULM was also demonstrated. This study demonstrates the potential utility of ultrafast CEUS for assessing perfusion and detecting changes in blood flow in the duodenum. SRUS/ULM also proved a useful tool to image the microvascular blood flow in vivo non-invasively and to evaluate blood speed inside the microvasculature of the human small intestine.
Details
Title
Determining the utility of ultrafast nonlinear contrast enhanced and super resolution ultrasound for imaging microcirculation in the human small intestine
Authors/Creators
Clotilde Vié
Martina Tashkova
James Burn
Matthieu Toulemonde
Jipeng Yan
Jingwen Zhu
Cameron A. B Smith
Biao Huang
Su Yan
Kevin G Murphy
Gary Frost
Meng-Xing Tang
Publication Details
ArXiv.org
Publisher
Cornell University
Identifiers
991005884850207891
Murdoch Affiliation
Centre for Computational and Systems Medicine
Language
English
Resource Type
Preprint
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