Acoustic Interference Suppression in Ultrasound images for Real-Time HIFU Monitoring Using an Image-Based Latent Diffusion Model

Abstract

High-Intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU) is a non-invasive therapeutic technique widely used for treating various diseases. However, the success and safety of HIFU treatments depend on real-time monitoring, which is often hindered by interference when using ultrasound to guide HIFU treatment. To address these challenges, we developed HIFU-ILDiff, a novel deep learning-based approach leveraging latent diffusion models to suppress HIFU-induced interference in ultrasound images. The HIFU-ILDiff model employs a Vector Quantized Variational Autoencoder (VQ-VAE) to encode noisy ultrasound images into a lower-dimensional latent space, followed by a latent diffusion model that iteratively removes interference. The denoised latent vectors are then decoded to reconstruct high-resolution, interference-free ultrasound images. We constructed a comprehensive dataset comprising 18,872 image pairs from in vitro phantoms, ex vivo tissues, and in vivo animal data across multiple imaging modalities and HIFU power levels to train and evaluate the model. Experimental results demonstrate that HIFU-ILDiff significantly outperforms the commonly used Notch Filter method, achieving a Structural Similarity Index (SSIM) of 0.796 and Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) of 23.780 compared to SSIM of 0.443 and PSNR of 14.420 for the Notch Filter under in vitro scenarios. Additionally, HIFU-ILDiff achieves real-time processing at 15 frames per second, markedly faster than the Notch Filter's 5 seconds per frame. These findings indicate that HIFU-ILDiff is able to denoise HIFU interference in ultrasound guiding images for real-time monitoring during HIFU therapy, which will greatly improve the treatment precision in current clinical applications.