Internship proposal: Sensing ultrasound localization microscopy (sULM)

! INTERNSHIP FILLED !

! CLIQUER ICI POUR LA VERSION FRANÇAISE !

 

Download the internship proposal

Internship type

MSc 2nd year or last year of engineering school

Duration

6 months from early 2024

Context

In 2010, ultrasound imaging domain experienced a breakthrough in resolution with the discovery of the Ultrasound Localization Microscopy (ULM) [Couture et al., 2010]. ULM is a super-resolution
ultrasound imaging technique, it relies on the tracking of microbubbles flowing in the blood vessels. These microbubbles are routinely used in clinic as ultrasound contrast agents. Resolution gain of a factor 10 with respect to the physical limit was possible in-vivo in a preclinical rat brain model [Errico et al., 2015]. This discovery opened the path for a new field [Couture et al., 2018] and the implementation of ULM in various clinical studies.

Recently, we proposed super-resolution ultrasound with micrometric sensors (sensing ULM or sULM) which makes it possible to classify the individual behavior of microbubbles independently of their movement and thus observe the local forces and anatomy of the microcirculation. This implies being able to measure their position at the micrometric scale as well as other characteristics of their echoes. This technique has allowed us to reveal the glomeruli in the human kidney in the clinic in 2D (Denis et al., 2023) as well as in the rat kidney in 3D (Chabouh et al., 2023).

3D sensing Ultrasound Localization microscopy of rat kidney in-vivo (Chabouh et al., 2023)

Super-resolution ultrasound of the human kidney using the sULM technique (Denis et al. 2023)

Objective

During this internship, we want to expand the approach to track continuous tracks of the microbubbles for several minutes and to include more properties of microbubbles in order to describe their local environment more precisely.

Missions

The intern will have the following tasks:

  • Understand the post-processing to obtain 3D ULMs
  • Reconstruct continuous microbubbles pathway in-vivo
  • Expand the parameters of the echoes from the bubbles taken into account in the 3D ULM
  • Participate in in-vivo studies
  • Define new forms of sULM imaging

Expected competences

  • Theory and practice in ultrasound and signal processing
  • Theory and practice in biomedical engineering,
  • Writing and exchanges in English,
  • Willingness to evolve within multiple research environments (medical imaging laboratory) and multiple fields (acoustics, biomedical, in-vivo), • Tropism for applied research.

It is not required to master all these concepts perfectly but to want to understand them and use them quickly.

References

  1. Chabouh, G., Denis, L., Bodard, S., Lager, F., Renault, G., chavignon, A., & couture, O. (2023). Whole organ volumetric sensing Ultrasound Localization Microscopy for characterization of kidney structure. bioRxiv, 2023-08.
  2. Errico, C., Pierre, J., Pezet, S., Desailly, Y., Lenkei, Z., Couture, O., & Tanter, M. (2015). Ultrafast ultrasound localization microscopy for deep super-resolution vascular imaging. Nature, 527(7579), 499-502.
  3. Couture, O., Hingot, V., Heiles, B., Muleki-Seya, P., & Tanter, M. (2018). Ultrasound localization microscopy and superresolution: A state of the art. IEEE transactions on ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control, 65(8), 1304-1320.
  4. Denis, L., Bodard, S., Hingot, V., Chavignon, A., Battaglia, J., Renault, G., … & Couture, O. (2023). Sensing ultrasound localization microscopy for the visualization of glomeruli in living rats and humans. Ebiomedicine, 91.

Remuneration

Internship gratification

Contact

Olivier Couture – olivier.couture[at]sorbonne-universite.fr
Georges Chabouh – georges.chabouh[at]sorbonne-universite.fr

Location

Laboratoire d’Imagerie Biomédicale (LIB) – 15 rue de l’École de Médecine 75006 Paris