Tracking in High-Frame-Rate Imaging

Speckle tracking has been used for motion estimation in ultrasound imaging. Unlike conventional Doppler techniques, which are angle-dependent, speckle tracking can be utilized to estimate velocity vectors. However, the accuracy of speckle-tracking methods is limited by speckle decorrelation, which is related to the displacement between two consecutive images, and, hence, combining high-frame-rate imaging and speckle tracking could potentially increase the accuracy of motion estimation. However, the lack of transmit focusing may also affect the tracking results and the high computational requirement may be problematic. This study therefore assessed the performance of high-frame-rate speckle tracking and compared it with conventional focusing. The effects of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), bulk motion, and velocity gradients were investigated in both experiments and simulations. The results show that high-frame-rate speckle tracking can achieve high accuracy if the SNR is sufficiently high. In addition, its computational complexity is acceptable because smaller search windows can be used due to the displacements between frames generally being smaller during high-frame-rate imaging. Speckle decorrelation resulting from velocity gradients within a sample volume is also not as significant during high-frame-rate imaging.