PhD defence B.S. (Bastian) Generowicz

Below is a brief summary of the dissertation:

Doppler ultrasound has a rich history, tracing back to advances in the field of sound navigation and ranging (sonar) after the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. In more recent times, it has flourished as a promising field of research, in part due to its contributions in the field of neuroscience through a technique built upon Doppler ultrasound, named functional ultrasound (fUS). With fUS imaging, we can track how the brain blood hemodynamics change over longer periods of time in response to a presented stimulation paradigm. fUS is an ultrasound imaging modality that is often compared to functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), as they both measure proxies for neuronal activity. Due to its portability, price, and higher spatial/ temporal resolutions, fUS has proven to be a great tool for neuroscientific research.

In this dissertation we present contributions to various stages of the Doppler ultrasound acquisition pipeline. This dissertation includes:  a computationally efficient method for removing tissue clutter, analysis of the Doppler frequency spectrum during functional ultrasound recordings, a method for vessel orientation extraction to add directional information to the traditional power Doppler imaging, a method for the manufacturing of anatomically accurate Doppler ultrasound flow phantoms, and a novel method for volumetric Doppler imaging of the mouse brain using a 1D-array transducer, named Swept-3D.