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

这项研究项目将调查一种名为超级分辨率超声(在本报告中称为SRU)的高性能成像方式的临床使用情况，以及它探测微尺度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：在诊断、监测和治疗特定疾病的过程中，超分辨率超声图像能为临床工作人员提供哪些有益的信息？目前，该项目的目标范围是专注于肿瘤的特征，因为已经有几份出版物记录了肿瘤微血管组织的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；舌头内的微结构可能会揭示患者脓毒症的信息，项目范围可以在以后扩大以研究这一问题。这项研究将考虑英国医疗保健系统中现有的临床程序、广泛可用的设备以及SRU在临床工作流程中的适应程度，项目的方法论将反映这些考虑。最初，该项目的重点是使用超声模体，评估产生SRU图像的设备和处理算法的性能。此后，拟议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，以更好地了解可提取的关于组织形态的信息，并试图开发一种方法，利用现有的组织学分析作为基本事实指标来量化和比较不同的肿瘤微观结构。

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.