Measurement of Wall Shear Rate Across the Entire Vascular Wall Using Ultrasound Speckle Decorrelation

Objective: The accurate measurement of the wall shear rate (WSR) plays a crucial role in the early diagnosis of cardiovascular disease progression and acute events such as aneurysms and atherosclerotic plaque ruptures. To address this need, the speckle decorrelation (SDC) technique has been used to measure WSR based on the 2-D out-of-plane blood flow speed. This technique is particularly advantageous because it enables the use of a 1-D array transducer to measure WSR over the entire luminal area. This study aims to develop a region-based singular value decomposition (SVD) filtering technique that selectively suppresses clutter noise in the vascular region to measure WSR using SDC.

Method: Ultrasound simulations, in-vitro flow experiments, and an in-vivo human study were conducted to evaluate the feasibility of this method's clinical application.

Results: The results demonstrated that WSR can be effectively measured across entire vascular walls using a conventional 1-D array transducer along with the proposed methodology.

Conclusion: This study successfully demonstrates a noninvasive and accurate SDC-based method for measuring vital vascular WSR. This approach holds significant promise for assessing vascular WSR in both healthy individuals and high-risk cardiovascular disease patients.