Phase Aberration Correction for in vivo Ultrasound Localization Microscopy Using a Spatiotemporal Complex-Valued Neural Network

Abstract: Ultrasound Localization Microscopy (ULM) can map microvessels at a resolution of a few micrometers (\mu m). Transcranial ULM remains challenging in presence of aberrations caused by the skull, which lead to localization errors. Herein, we propose a deep learning approach based on complex-valued convolutional neural networks (CV-CNNs) to retrieve the aberration function, which can then be used to form enhanced images using standard delay-and-sum beamforming. CV-CNNs were selected as they can apply time delays through multiplication with in-phase quadrature input data. Predicting the aberration function rather than corrected images also confers enhanced explainability to the network. In addition, 3D spatiotemporal convolutions were used for the network to leverage entire microbubble tracks. For training and validation, we used an anatomically and hemodynamically realistic mouse brain microvascular network model to simulate the flow of microbubbles in presence of aberration. The proposed CV-CNN performance was compared to the coherence-based method by using microbubble tracks. We then confirmed the capability of the proposed network to generalize to transcranial \textit{in vivo} data in the mouse brain (n=3). Vascular reconstructions using a locally predicted aberration function included additional and sharper vessels. The CV-CNN was more robust than the coherence-based method and could perform aberration correction in a 6-month-old mouse. After correction, we measured a resolution of 15.6 \mu m for younger mice, representing an improvement of 25.8 $\%$, while the resolution was improved by 13.9 $\%$ for the 6-month-old mouse. This work leads to different applications for complex-valued convolutions in biomedical imaging and strategies to perform transcranial ULM.