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Applied Sciences
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3D Medical Ultrasound: Imaging and Hardware
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3D Medical Ultrasound: Imaging and Hardware

A special issue of Applied Sciences (ISSN 2076-3417). This special issue belongs to the section "Applied Biosciences and Bioengineering".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 May 2021) | Viewed by 12998

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Enrico Boni

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Information Engineering, University of Florence, 50139 Florence, Italy
Interests: real-time electronics systems; drone architecture; high-performance computing platforms
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Alessandro Ramalli

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Information Engineering, University of Florence, 50139 Florence, Italy
Interests: ultrasound systems; real-time signal processing; sparse arrays; ultrasound imaging; high frame rate imaging; cardiac imaging; flow imaging; vector Doppler; motion estimation; tissue Doppler imaging; elastography; ultrasound beamforming; pulse compression
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Giulia Matrone

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Electrical, Computer and Biomedical Engineering, University of Pavia, 27100 Pavia, Italy
Interests: ultrasound medical imaging; beamforming and image reconstruction techniques; signal processing; elastography; high-frame-rate imaging; ultrasound simulations and system-level analyses; microwave imaging for biomedical applications
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to introduce this Special Issue on “3D Medical Ultrasound: Imaging and Hardware”, to be published in the open access journal Applied Sciences.

Ultrasound medical imaging is a well-known diagnostic imaging technique, providing high temporal resolution and a safe, low-cost, and generally patient-friendly examination without the use of any ionizing radiation. New three-dimensional (3D) systems, approaches, and applications have recently been emerging, and are capable of providing 3D visualization of moving anatomical structures. Although these have already been adopted by some companies, their great potential has largely remained unexplored, mainly due to issues of spatiotemporal resolution or field-of-view, transmission/reception beamforming scheme limitations, an unsatisfactory number of active elements/channels, very high computational/bandwidth requirements for real-time processing, and low signal-to-noise ratio.

This Special Issue aims to include novel contributions on 3D ultrasound imaging, from hardware (including probes and system design) to image formation methods (either low or high frame-rate), and also regarding signal and image processing techniques (new applications and 3D rendering).

We warmly invite authors to contribute to this Special Issue with original high-quality research or review papers.

Yours faithfully,

Dr. Enrico Boni
Dr. Alessandro Ramalli
Dr. Giulia Matrone
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Applied Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • 3D ultrasound medical imaging
  • beamforming
  • transmission/reception strategies
  • image compounding
  • coded imaging
  • superresolution imaging
  • image quality
  • signal and image processing
  • vector Doppler
  • 3D rendering
  • two-dimensional probes
  • high channel count system architectures
  • 3D ultrasound image processing

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

21 pages, 5554 KiB  
Article
Real-Time Volumetric Ultrasound Research Platform with 1024 Parallel Transmit and Receive Channels
by Christoph Risser, Holger Hewener, Marc Fournelle, Heinrich Fonfara, Selina Barry-Hummel, Steffen Weber, Daniel Speicher and Steffen Tretbar
Appl. Sci. 2021, 11(13), 5795; https://doi.org/10.3390/app11135795 - 22 Jun 2021
Cited by 12 | Viewed by 3094
Abstract
Volumetric ultrasound imaging is of great importance in many medical fields, especially in cardiology, but also in therapy monitoring applications. For development of new imaging technologies and scanning strategies, it is crucial to be able to use a hardware platform that is as [...] Read more.
Volumetric ultrasound imaging is of great importance in many medical fields, especially in cardiology, but also in therapy monitoring applications. For development of new imaging technologies and scanning strategies, it is crucial to be able to use a hardware platform that is as free and flexible as possible and does not restrict the user in his research in any way. For this purpose, multi-channel ultrasound systems are particularly suitable, as they are able to control each individual element of a matrix array without the use of a multiplexer. We set out to develop a fully integrated, compact 1024-channel ultrasound system that provides full access to all transmission parameters and all digitized raw data of each transducer element. For this purpose, we synchronize four research scanners of our latest “DiPhAS” ultrasound research system generation, each with 256 parallel channels, all connected to a single PC on whose GPUs the entire signal processing is performed. All components of the system are housed in a compact, movable 19-inch rack. The system is designed as a general-purpose platform for research in volumetric imaging; however, the first-use case will be therapy monitoring by tracking radiation-sensitive ultrasound contrast agents. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue 3D Medical Ultrasound: Imaging and Hardware)
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28 pages, 8414 KiB  
Article
High-Contrast and -Resolution 3-D Ultrasonography with a Clinical Linear Transducer Array Scanned in a Rotate-Translate Geometry
by Théotim Lucas, Isabelle Quidu, S. Lori Bridal and Jerome Gateau
Appl. Sci. 2021, 11(2), 493; https://doi.org/10.3390/app11020493 - 6 Jan 2021
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2275
Abstract
We proposed a novel solution for volumetric ultrasound imaging using single-side access 3-D synthetic aperture scanning of a clinical linear array. This solution is based on an advanced scanning geometry and a software-based ultrasound platform. The rotate-translate scanning scheme increases the elevation angular [...] Read more.
We proposed a novel solution for volumetric ultrasound imaging using single-side access 3-D synthetic aperture scanning of a clinical linear array. This solution is based on an advanced scanning geometry and a software-based ultrasound platform. The rotate-translate scanning scheme increases the elevation angular aperture by pivoting the array (−45° to 45°) around its array axis (axis along the row of its elements) and then scans the imaged object for each pivoted angle by translating the array perpendicularly to the rotation axis. A theoretical basis is presented so that the angular and translational scan sampling periods can be best adjusted for any linear transducer array. We experimentally implemented scanning with a 5-MHz array. In vitro characterization was performed with phantoms designed to test resolution and contrast. Spatial resolution assessed based on the full-width half-maximum of images from isolated microspheres was increased by a factor of 3 along the translational direction from a simple translation scan of the array. Moreover, the resolution was uniform over a cross-sectional area of 4.5 cm2. Angular sampling periods were optimized and tapered to decrease the scan duration while maintaining image contrast (contrast at the center of a 5-mm cyst on the order of −26 dB for 4° angular period and a scan duration of 10 s for a 9-cm3 volume). We demonstrated that superior 3-D ultrasound imaging can be obtained with a clinical array using our scanning strategy. This technique offers a promising and flexible alternative to development of costly matrix arrays toward the development of sensitive volumetric ultrasonography. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue 3D Medical Ultrasound: Imaging and Hardware)
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14 pages, 4152 KiB  
Article
High-Frame-Rate 3-D Vector Flow Imaging in the Frequency Domain
by Stefano Rossi, Alessandro Ramalli, Fabian Fool and Piero Tortoli
Appl. Sci. 2020, 10(15), 5365; https://doi.org/10.3390/app10155365 - 3 Aug 2020
Cited by 13 | Viewed by 3640
Abstract
Ultrasound vector Doppler techniques for three-dimensional (3-D) blood velocity measurements are currently limited by low temporal resolution and high computational cost. In this paper, an efficient 3-D high-frame-rate vector Doppler method, which estimates the displacements in the frequency domain, is proposed. The novel [...] Read more.
Ultrasound vector Doppler techniques for three-dimensional (3-D) blood velocity measurements are currently limited by low temporal resolution and high computational cost. In this paper, an efficient 3-D high-frame-rate vector Doppler method, which estimates the displacements in the frequency domain, is proposed. The novel method extends to 3-D an approach so far proposed for two-dimensional (2-D) velocity measurements by approximating the (x, y, z) displacement of a small volume through the displacements estimated for the 2-D regions parallel to the y and x directions, respectively. The new method was tested by simulation and experiments for a 3.7 MHz, 256-element, 2-D piezoelectric sparse spiral array. Simulations were also performed for an equivalent 7 MHz Capacitive Micromachined Ultrasonic Transducer spiral array. The results indicate performance (bias ± standard deviation: 6.5 ± 8.0) comparable to the performance obtained by using a linear array for 2-D velocity measurements. These results are particularly encouraging when considering that sparse arrays were used, which involve a lower signal-to-noise ratio and worse beam characteristics with respect to full 2-D arrays. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue 3D Medical Ultrasound: Imaging and Hardware)
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16 pages, 6229 KiB  
Article
Receive/Transmit Aperture Selection for 3D Ultrasound Imaging with a 2D Matrix Transducer
by Moein Mozaffarzadeh, Mehdi Soozande, Fabian Fool, Michiel A. P. Pertijs, Hendrik J. Vos, Martin D. Verweij, Johan G. Bosch and Nico de Jong
Appl. Sci. 2020, 10(15), 5300; https://doi.org/10.3390/app10155300 - 31 Jul 2020
Cited by 10 | Viewed by 3196
Abstract
Recently, we realized a prototype matrix transducer consisting of 48 rows of 80 elements on top of a tiled set of Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) implementing a row-level control connecting one transmit/receive channel to an arbitrary subset of elements per row. A [...] Read more.
Recently, we realized a prototype matrix transducer consisting of 48 rows of 80 elements on top of a tiled set of Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) implementing a row-level control connecting one transmit/receive channel to an arbitrary subset of elements per row. A fully sampled array data acquisition is implemented by a column-by-column (CBC) imaging scheme (80 transmit-receive shots) which achieves 250 volumes/second (V/s) at a pulse repetition frequency of 20 kHz. However, for several clinical applications such as carotid pulse wave imaging (CPWI), a volume rate of 1000 per second is needed. This allows only 20 transmit-receive shots per 3D image. In this study, we propose a shifting aperture scheme and investigate the effects of receive/transmit aperture size and aperture shifting step in the elevation direction. The row-level circuit is used to interconnect elements of a receive aperture in the elevation (row) direction. An angular weighting method is used to suppress the grating lobes caused by the enlargement of the effective elevation pitch of the array, as a result of element interconnection in the elevation direction. The effective aperture size, level of grating lobes, and resolution/sidelobes are used to select suitable reception/transmission parameters. Based on our assessment, the proposed imaging sequence is a full transmission (all 80 elements excited at the same time), a receive aperture size of 5 and an aperture shifting step of 3. Numerical results obtained at depths of 10, 15, and 20 mm show that, compared to the fully sampled array, the 1000 V/s is achieved at the expense of, on average, about two times wider point spread function and 4 dB higher clutter level. The resulting grating lobes were at −27 dB. The proposed imaging sequence can be used for carotid pulse wave imaging to generate an informative 3D arterial stiffness map, for cardiovascular disease assessment. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue 3D Medical Ultrasound: Imaging and Hardware)
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