Abstract：
Numerous quantitative ultrasound imaging techniques have demonstrated superior monitoring performance for thermal ablation when compared to conventional ultrasonic B-mode imaging. However, the absence of comparative studies involving various quantitative ultrasound imaging techniques hinders further clinical exploration. In this study, we simultaneously reconstructed ultrasonic Nakagami imaging, ultrasonic horizontally normalized Shannon entropy (hNSE) imaging, and ultrasonic differential attenuation coefficient intercept (DACI) imaging from ultrasound backscattered envelope data collected during high-intensity focused ultrasound ablation treatment. We comprehensively investigated their performance differences through qualitative and quantitative analyses, including the calculation of contrast-to-noise ratios (CNR) for ultrasonic images, receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis with corresponding indicators, the analysis of lesion area fitting relationships, and computational time consumption comparison. The mean CNR of hNSE imaging was 10.98 ± 4.48 dB, significantly surpassing the 3.82 ± 1.40 dB (p < 0.001, statistically significant) of Nakagami imaging and the 2.45 ± 0.74 dB (p < 0.001, statistically significant) of DACI imaging. This substantial difference underscores that hNSE imaging offers the highest contrast resolution for lesion recognition. Furthermore, we evaluated the ability of multiple ultrasonic parametric imaging to detect thermal ablation lesions using ROC curves. The area under the curve (AUC) for hNSE was 0.874, exceeding the values of 0.848 for Nakagami imaging and 0.832 for DACI imaging. Additionally, hNSE imaging exhibited the strongest linear correlation coefficient (R = 0.92) in the comparison of lesion area fitting, outperforming Nakagami imaging (R = 0.87) and DACI imaging (R = 0.85). hNSE imaging also performs best in real-time monitoring with each frame taking 6.38 s among multiple ultrasonic parametric imaging. Our findings unequivocally demonstrate that hNSE imaging excels in monitoring HIFU ablation treatment and holds the greatest potential for further clinical exploration.
摘要：
与常规超声B模式成像相比，许多定量超声成像技术已证明了对热消融的出色监测性能。然而,缺乏涉及各种定量超声成像技术的比较研究阻碍了进一步的临床探索。在这项研究中,我们同时重建了中上超声成像，超声水平归一化香农熵(hNSE)成像,和来自高强度聚焦超声消融治疗期间收集的超声背散射包络数据的超声差分衰减系数截距（DACI）成像。我们通过定性和定量分析全面调查了它们的性能差异，包括超声图像的对比度噪声比(CNR)的计算，具有相应指标的接收机工作特性(ROC)分析，病变面积拟合关系分析，和计算时间消耗比较。hNSE成像的平均CNR为10.98±4.48dB，显着超过Nakagami成像的3.82±1.40dB（p<0.001，具有统计学意义）和DACI成像的2.45±0.74dB（p<0.001，具有统计学意义）。这种实质性差异强调了hNSE成像为病变识别提供了最高的对比分辨率。此外，我们使用ROC曲线评估了多超声参数成像检测热消融损伤的能力.hNSE的曲线下面积(AUC)为0.874,超过Nakagami成像的0.848和DACI成像的0.832的值。此外,hNSE成像在病灶面积拟合比较中表现出最强的线性相关系数(R=0.92),优于Nakagami成像（R=0.87）和DACI成像（R=0.85）。hNSE成像在实时监测中也表现最佳,在多个超声参数成像中每帧花费6.38s。我们的发现明确表明，hNSE成像在监测HIFU消融治疗方面表现出色，并具有进一步临床探索的最大潜力。
