Super-resolution vascular imaging

Conventional clinical ultrasound imaging offers a resolution of, at best, sub-millimetre scale due to fundamental limits of diffraction. Claudia Errico et al. demonstrate a new technique based on ultrasound imaging at ultrafast frame that has sufficiently high resolution at large depths to enable whole-organ mapping of microvasculature. The underlying technique is similar to that of optical localization super-resolution microscopy and is based on fast tracking of transient signals from a sub-wavelength contrast agent — here inert gas microbubbles that are intravenously injected into the blood system. The authors demonstrate the technique by reconstructing the brain microvasculature of a living rat.