IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control

This paper explores what useful information can be retrieved from pipeline interiors using an air-coupled ultrasonic array. Experiments are performed using an array, custom array controller and supporting electronics controlled by a Raspberry Pi 4, mounted on board a crawler robot. A 64 transducer 40 kHz array configuration is selected based on uniformity of imaging amplitude over the circumference of the pipe wall. Testing revealed joints between pipe sections could be imaged at high amplitude, and that angular displacement between sections produced a different response to a properly aligned joint, potentially enabling detection of faulty joints...

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We propose burst-wave-aided, contrast-enhanced, active Doppler ultrasonography for visualizing lymph vessels. This technique forces ultrasound contrast agents to move using the acoustic radiation force induced by burst waves with low amplitude while suppressing their destruction. Using a flow phantom, we measured the average, decrease rate of echo intensity (i.e., pulse intensity integral), and the velocity of individual contrast agents, which directly affects the performance of imaging and tracking contrast agents under stationary flow conditions...

Quantitative ultrasound (QUS) analyzes the ultrasound backscattered data to find the properties of scatterers that correlate with the tissue microstructure. Statistics of the envelope of the backscattered radiofrequency (RF) data can be utilized to estimate several QUS parameters. Different distributions have been proposed to model envelope data. The homodyned K-distribution (HK-distribution) is one of the most comprehensive distributions that can model ultrasound backscattered envelope data under diverse scattering conditions (varying scatterer number density and coherent scattering)...

Cascaded Dual-polarity Waves (CDW) imaging increases the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) by transmitting trains of pulses with different polarity order, which are combined via decoding afterwards. This potentially enables velocity vector imaging (VVI) in more challenging SNR conditions. However, the motion of blood in between the trains will influence the decoding process. In this work, the use of CDW for blood VVI is evaluated for the first time. Dual-angle, plane wave ultrasound, CDW-coded and non-coded (conventional Plane Wave, cPW), was acquired using a 7...

High-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) applications for thermal or mechanical ablation of renal tumors often encounter challenges due to significant beam aberration and refraction caused by oblique beam incidence, inhomogeneous tissue layers and presence of gas and bones within the beam. These losses can be significantly mitigated through sonication geometry planning, patient positioning, and aberration correction using multi-element phased arrays. Here, a sonication planning algorithm is introduced that uses simulations to select the optimal transducer position, evaluate the effect of aberrations and acoustic field quality at the target region after aberration correction...

This study presents a deep learning methodology using 3-dimensional (3D) convolutional neural networks to detect defects in carbon fiber reinforced polymer composites through volumetric ultrasonic testing data. Acquiring large amounts of ultrasonic training data experimentally is expensive and time-consuming. To address this issue, a synthetic data generation method was extended to incorporate volumetric data. By preserving the complete volumetric data, complex preprocessing is reduced, and the model can utilize spatial and temporal information that is lost during imaging...

Ultrasound imaging offers a non-invasive, radiation-free method for visualizing internal tissues and organs, with deep penetration capabilities. This has established it as a crucial tool for physicians in diagnosing internal tissue pathologies and monitoring human conditions. Nonetheless, conventional ultrasound probes are often characterized by their rigidity and bulkiness. Designing a transducer that can seamlessly adapt to the contours and dynamics of soft, curved human skin presents significant technical hurdles...

Three-dimensional ultrasound (US) imaging technique has been studied to facilitate the diagnosis of spinal deformity without radiation. The objective of this paper is to propose an assessment framework to automatically estimate spinal deformity in US spine images. The proposed framework comprises four major components, a US spine image generator, a novel transformer-based light-weight spine detector network, an angle evaluator and a 3D modeler. The principal component analysis and discriminative scale space tracking method are first adopted to generate the US spine images...

Accurate and continuous bladder volume monitoring is crucial for managing urinary dysfunctions. Wearable ultrasound devices offer a solution by enabling non-invasive and real-time monitoring. Previous studies have limitations in power consumption and computation cost or quantitative volume estimation capability. To alleviate this, we present a novel pipeline that effectively integrates conventional feature extraction and deep learning to achieve continuous quantitative bladder volume monitoring efficiently...

The shoulder is the most mobile joint in the human body, thus requiring intricate coordination of adjacent muscles. Patients suffered from rotator cuff muscle Injuries have several typical symptoms include shoulder pain and difficulty raising the arm, thus reducing work efficiency, and compromising the quality of life. Ultrasound has been used widely for shoulder soft tissue imaging as well as ultrasound elastography was introduced in shoulder examination for the dilemma of treating degenerative rotator cuff tears...

Intraosseous ultrasound imaging can serve as a guiding tool for the placement of pedicle screws during spinal fusion surgery. Thus far, there has been limited scholarly exploration of methods for intraosseous multi-frequency ultrasound imaging, which can achieve simultaneous high resolution and deep penetration. The proposed method introduced a dynamic fusion strategy, grounded in wavelet transformation for the multi-frequency image decomposition. This strategy accomplished the effective amalgamation of high-frequency ultrasound images and low-frequency ultrasound images, enabling to obtain fused images with enhanced details and better overall image quality...

Transverse mode suppression is a great challenge for high performance surface acoustic wave (SAW) resonators. Conventional methods work well on narrow band resonators, but their performances on wideband resonator have not been demonstrated. In this paper, we give an in-depth study on the transverse mode suppression of wideband resonators using 11°YX-LiNbO3 (LN)/ 70°Y90°X-Quartz (Qz) hetero acoustic layer structure as a platform. Two groups of design, including new dummy electrode and zigzag shape apodization, are proposed...

The objective of this study is to develop a deep-learning based detection and diagnosis technique for carotid atherosclerosis using a portable freehand 3D ultrasound (US) imaging system. A total of 127 3D carotid artery scans were acquired using a portable 3D US system which consisted of a handheld US scanner and an electromagnetic tracking system. A U-Net segmentation network was firstly applied to extract the carotid artery on 2D transverse frame, then a novel 3D reconstruction algorithm using fast dot projection (FDP) method with position regularization was proposed to reconstruct the carotid artery volume...

The biaxial method consists of the utilization of orthogonal electric fields in single-element piezoceramics both in transmission and reception. This study demonstrates the application of the biaxial method to broadband transducers. We developed a three-element biaxial transducer array to demonstrate the feasibility of biaxial method in imaging applications. Finite element analysis was used to model the response of a single transducer element. An electric characterization was performed at each transducer element to determine their driving frequency...

With the development of promising cavitation-based treatments, the interest in cavitation monitoring with passive acoustic mapping (PAM) is significantly increasing. While most of studies regarding PAM are performed in 2D, 3D imaging modalities are getting more attention relying on either custom-made or commercial matrix probes. Unless specific phased-arrays are used for a specific application, limitations due to probe apertures often results in poor performances of the 3D mapping, due to the use of a Delay-And-Sum (DAS) classic beamformer, which results in strong artifacts and large main lobe sizes...

Super-Resolution Ultrasound (SRUS) through localizing spatially isolated microbubbles has been demonstrated to overcome the wave diffraction limit and reveal the microvascular structure and flow information at the microscopic scale. However, 3D SRUS imaging remains a challenge due to the fabrication and computational complexity of 2D matrix array probes. Inspired by X-ray radiography which can present information within a volume in a single projection image with much simpler hardware than X-ray CT, this study investigates the feasibility of broad elevation projection super-resolution (BEP-SR) ultrasound using a 1D unfocused linear array...

Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) operations are limited by currently achievable underwater localization and navigation solutions; hence the development of low-cost and passive (i.e., operable without an active power supply) acoustic underwater markers (or tags) can provide accurate localization information to AUVs improving their situational awareness, especially when operating in small scales or confined missions. This work presents an Acoustic Identification (AID) tag that can be powered wirelessly with ultrasonic power transfer from a remote acoustic source (e...

This paper discusses the design and development of a wearable and portable ultrasound auricular nerve stimulator. The device is in the form of a headset that presses against the Cymba Concha depression in the ear and stimulates the auricular vagus nerve with ultrasound energy. This paper reviews the development, design, and material structures for such a system, including the characterization of the working prototypes. The devices are being supplied to various organizations and universities for clinical trials in which effectiveness will be assessed...

This paper discusses the application of sparse Synthetic Aperture Focusing Techniques (SAFT) for fast and accurate ultrasonic Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) imaging of solids in cases where a wedge is required between the transducer array and the test medium. A wedge is often used to appropriately direct the ultrasonic beams when testing for structural defects at particular orientations or when inspecting parts with particular geometries (e.g. waveguides). Both the Virtual Element and the Plane Wave modalities of sparse firing SAFT are examined for the wedge case that requires particular considerations in the beamforming algorithms for the wave refractions and mode conversions occurring at the wedge-medium interface...