Current working project title: Development of super-resolution ultrasound imaging for tumour characterisation.

本研究项目将研究一种称为超分辨率超声的高性能成像方式的临床应用（在本报告中称为SRUS）及其探测微观组织形态以表征肿瘤的能力。我们将试图回答的基本问题是“超分辨率超声图像在诊断、监测和治疗特定疾病时能为临床工作人员提供哪些有益的信息？”目前，该项目的预期范围是集中在肿瘤特征上，因为已经有一些出版物记录了肿瘤微血管组织形态与其疾病严重程度之间的潜在联系。此外，有证据表明，可以通过分析特定组织的微血管结构来研究其他类型的疾病；舌头内部的微观结构可能会揭示患者败血症的信息，该项目的范围可能会在以后的日期扩大，以调查这一点。现有的临床程序在英国的医疗保健系统，广泛可用的设备和如何很好地适应临床工作流程的SRUS都必须考虑在这项研究中，项目的方法将反映这些考虑。最初，该项目的重点是使用超声波幻象，评估设备的性能和生成SRUS图像的处理算法。此后，提出的方法将侧重于分析现有的临床数据集以及收集更多的临床数据，以更好地理解可以提取的有关组织形态学的信息，并尝试开发一种使用现有组织学分析作为基础真实指标的量化和比较不同肿瘤微观结构的方法。

This research project will investigate the clinical use of a high-performance imaging modality called Super Resolution Ultrasound (referred to as SRUS throughout this report) and its ability to probe micro-scale tissue morphology to characterise tumours. The fundamental question we will be trying to answer is 'What beneficial information can super-resolution ultrasound images provide to clinical staff during diagnosing, monitoring and treating particular diseases?'. Currently, the project's intended scope is to focus on tumour characterisation, as there have been several publications documenting potential links between the morphology of a tumour's microvasculature tissue and its disease severity. Additionally, there is evidence that other types of conditions could be studied by analysing the microvascular structure of particular tissues; micro-structures within the tongue potentially could reveal information about a patient's sepsis, and the project scope could be expanded at a later date to investigate this. Existing clinical procedures in the UK healthcare system, the widely available equipment and how well SRUS fits into the clinical workflow will all have to be considered in this research, and the methodology of the project will reflect these considerations. Initially, the project has been focused on using ultrasound phantoms and assessing the performance of the equipment and processing algorithms for producing SRUS images. Thereafter, the proposed methodology will focus on analysing existing clinical data sets as well as collecting more clinical data to better understand the information that can be extracted about tissue morphology, and attempting to develop a method of quantifying and comparing different tumour microstructures using existing histology analysis as a ground truth indicator.