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.