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Applied Sciences
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Advanced Ultrasound Technology for Medical Application
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Advanced Ultrasound Technology for Medical Application

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

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2019) | Viewed by 22612

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Francisco Camarena

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Applied Physics Department, Universitat Politècnica de Valènica, 46022 Valencia, Spain;
Instituto de Instrumentación para Imagen Molecular
Interests: ultrasound imaging; ultrasound therapy
Dr. Noé Jiménez

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Instituto de Instrumentación para Imagen Molecular (i3M), Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV), Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), 46022 València, Spain
Interests: acoustics; ultrasonics; metamaterials; biomedical ultrasound; nonlinear acoustics
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Alejandro Cebrecos

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Instituto de Instrumentación para Imagen Molecular (I3M), Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)-Universitat Politècnica de València, 46011 València, Spain
Interests: acoustics; ultrasound; MMUS; photoacoustics; metamaterials

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Ultrasound technology has been extensively applied to the medical field in recent decades. Pulse-echo imaging techniques have been used as diagnostic procedures in obstetrics, cardiology and internal medicine; ultrasound elasticity imaging has become established as a clinical tool for the detection of breast, thyroid and prostate lesions as well as for liver assessment; high intensity focused ultrasound has been applied to treat uterine fibroids, prostate cancer, essential tremor, neuropathic pain and for the palliative treatment of bone metastasis; and medium intensity ultrasound is an everyday physiotherapy procedure used for drug delivery and blood–brain barrier opening. In addition, new advances in transducer technology, signal processing and contrast agents as well as the use of combined technologies, such as photoacoustics or magneto-motive ultrasound, and the discovery of the possibility of applying ultrasound to neuromodulation or immunotherapy open new areas for the use of ultrasound in medical application.

This Special Issue calls for high-quality unpublished research works related to the use of advanced ultrasound technology for medical application. Potential topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Ultrasound imaging;
  • Focused ultrasound;
  • Elastography;
  • Photoacoustic;
  • Magneto-motive ultrasound;
  • Theranostics;
  • Tissue characterization;
  • Transcranial propagation;
  • Medical signal processing;
  • Contrast agents;
  • Biomedical transducers.

Dr. Francisco Camarena
Dr. Noé Jiménez
Dr. Alejandro Cebrecos
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

  • ultrasound imaging
  • ultrasound therapy
  • elastography
  • photoacoustics
  • transcranial propagation
  • magneto-motive ultrasound
  • contrast agents

Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

10 pages, 3941 KiB  
Article
Broadband Generalized Sidelobe Canceler Beamforming Applied to Ultrasonic Imaging
by Jiake Li, Zhe Ma, Lei Mao, Zhengjun Wang, Yi Wang, Huaiyu Cai and Xiaodong Chen
Appl. Sci. 2020, 10(4), 1207; https://doi.org/10.3390/app10041207 - 11 Feb 2020
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 2150
Abstract
A broadband generalized sidelobe canceler (Broadband-GSC) application for near-field beamforming is proposed. This approach is implemented in the wavelet domain. Broadband-GSC provides a set of complex, adapted apodization weights for each wavelet subband. The proposed method constrains interference and noise signal to improve [...] Read more.
A broadband generalized sidelobe canceler (Broadband-GSC) application for near-field beamforming is proposed. This approach is implemented in the wavelet domain. Broadband-GSC provides a set of complex, adapted apodization weights for each wavelet subband. The proposed method constrains interference and noise signal to improve the lateral resolution with only one single emission. Performance of the proposed beamforming is tested on simulated data obtained with Field II. Experiments have proved that the new beamforming can significantly increase the image quality compared with delay-and-sum (DAS) and synthetic aperture (SA). Imaging of scattering points show that Broadband-GSC improves the lateral resolution by 43.2% and 58.0% compared with SA and DAS, respectively. Meanwhile，Broadband-GSC reduces the peak sidelobe level by 11.6 dB and 26.4 dB compared with SA and DAS, respectively. Plane wave emission experiment indicates that Broadband-GSC can improve the lateral resolution by 44.2% compared with DAS. Furthermore, the new beamforming introduces the possibility for higher frame-rate and higher investigation depth with increased lateral resolution. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Ultrasound Technology for Medical Application)
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17 pages, 3696 KiB  
Article
Rician Beamforming: Despeckle Method via Coarray Projection Stochastic Analysis
by Virginia Yagüe-Jiménez, Alberto Ibáñez Rodríguez, Montserrat Parrilla Romero and Oscar Martínez-Graullera
Appl. Sci. 2020, 10(3), 847; https://doi.org/10.3390/app10030847 - 24 Jan 2020
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1967
Abstract
Current computation capabilities normal, Delay and Sum (DAS) and Total Focusing Method (TFM) allow new definitions for beamformers. In this paper, a new beamforming method is proposed. It exploits diversity across pixel data after focusing process. The method is based on statistical analysis [...] Read more.
Current computation capabilities normal, Delay and Sum (DAS) and Total Focusing Method (TFM) allow new definitions for beamformers. In this paper, a new beamforming method is proposed. It exploits diversity across pixel data after focusing process. The method is based on statistical analysis and sparse array concept. It avoids common aberrations introduced by beamforming process without loosing the original image texture, producing a better quality image. We evaluate the proposed method through simulation on standard phantoms. Images resulting from our novel method display better quality and provide localised estimations on image noise. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Ultrasound Technology for Medical Application)
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11 pages, 2741 KiB  
Article
The Reference Phase Correction for the Fluctuated Scanning Lines and the Slope of the Stage in Tissue Characterization by Scanning Acoustic Microscope
by Nguyen Thanh Phong Truong, Hyehyun Kim, Donghae Lee, Yeon-Hee Kang, Sungsoo Na and Junghwan Oh
Appl. Sci. 2019, 9(22), 4883; https://doi.org/10.3390/app9224883 - 14 Nov 2019
Viewed by 2693
Abstract
In this study, a new approach was investigated to extract reference phases from the scanning acoustic microscope to calculate the speed of sound when dealing with the slope of the stage and fluctuation of the scanning lines. To capture the slope and the [...] Read more.
In this study, a new approach was investigated to extract reference phases from the scanning acoustic microscope to calculate the speed of sound when dealing with the slope of the stage and fluctuation of the scanning lines. To capture the slope and the fluctuation pattern, data of the first lines along the horizontal and vertical axes on the stage were used. A corrective function was then utilized to improve the accuracy of reference phase extraction. The method was then corroborated by demonstrating tumor discrimination in mice skin by means of scanning acoustic microscopy (SAM). B16-F10 melanoma cells were used to grow the tumor. Hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) staining was applied for histology characterization of the sample. A comparison of both acoustics and histology was conducted. Phase analysis was performed to examine the effects of both slope and fluctuation. The results showed that our approach significantly improved the tumor detection and accuracy of scanning acoustic microscopy. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Ultrasound Technology for Medical Application)
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14 pages, 4455 KiB  
Article
Two-Dimensional Spatial Coherence for Ultrasonic DMAS Beamforming in Multi-Angle Plane-Wave Imaging
by Che-Chou Shen and Pei-Ying Hsieh
Appl. Sci. 2019, 9(19), 3973; https://doi.org/10.3390/app9193973 - 23 Sep 2019
Cited by 20 | Viewed by 3162
Abstract
Ultrasonic multi-angle plane-wave (PW) coherent compounding relies on delay-and-sum (DAS) beamforming of two-dimensional (2D) echo matrix in both the dimensions PW transmit angle and receiving channel to construct each image pixel. Due to the characteristics of DAS beamforming, PW coherent compounding may suffer [...] Read more.
Ultrasonic multi-angle plane-wave (PW) coherent compounding relies on delay-and-sum (DAS) beamforming of two-dimensional (2D) echo matrix in both the dimensions PW transmit angle and receiving channel to construct each image pixel. Due to the characteristics of DAS beamforming, PW coherent compounding may suffer from high image clutter when the number of transmit angles is kept low for ultrafast image acquisition. Delay-multiply-and-sum (DMAS) beamforming exploits the spatial coherence of the receiving aperture to suppress clutter interference. Previous attempts to introduce DMAS beamforming into multi-angle PW imaging has been reported but only in either dimension of the 2D echo matrix. In this study, a novel DMAS operation is proposed to extract the 2D spatial coherence of echo matrix for further improvement of image quality. The proposed 2D-DMAS method relies on a flexibly tunable p value to manipulate the signal coherence in the beamforming output. For p = 2.0 as an example, simulation results indicate that 2D-DMAS outperforms other one-dimensional DMAS methods by at least 9.3 dB in terms of ghost-artifact suppression. Experimental results also show that 2D-DMAS provides the highest improvement in lateral resolution by 32% and in image contrast by 15.6 dB relative to conventional 2D-DAS beamforming. Nonetheless, since 2D-DMAS emphasizes signal coherence more than its one-dimensional DMAS counterparts, it suffers from the most elevated speckle variation and the granular pattern in the tissue background. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Ultrasound Technology for Medical Application)
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11 pages, 2004 KiB  
Article
Efficient Transmit Delay Calculation in Ultrasound Coherent Plane-Wave Compound Imaging for Curved Array Transducers
by Dooyoung Go, Jinbum Kang, Ilseob Song and Yangmo Yoo
Appl. Sci. 2019, 9(13), 2752; https://doi.org/10.3390/app9132752 - 08 Jul 2019
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 4715
Abstract
The recently introduced plane-wave compounding method based on multiple plane-wave excitation has enabled several new applications due to its high frame rate (>1000 Hz). In this paper, a new efficient transmit delay calculation method in plane-wave compound imaging for a curved array transducer [...] Read more.
The recently introduced plane-wave compounding method based on multiple plane-wave excitation has enabled several new applications due to its high frame rate (>1000 Hz). In this paper, a new efficient transmit delay calculation method in plane-wave compound imaging for a curved array transducer is presented. In the proposed method, the transmit delay is only calculated for a steering angle of 0° and is shifted along the element of the transducer to obtain other transmit delays for different steering angles. To evaluate the performance of the proposed method, the computational complexity was measured for various transmission conditions. For the number of elements and plane-wave excitations of 128 and 65, respectively, the number of operations was substantially decreased in the proposed method compared with the conventional method (256 vs. 8320). The benefits of the proposed method were demonstrated with phantom and in vivo experiments, where coherent plane-wave compounding with 65 excitations provided larger CR and CNR values compared to nine excitations (−22.5 dB and 2.7 vs. −11.3 dB and 1.9, respectively). These results indicate the proposed method can effectively reduce the computational complexity for plane-wave compound imaging in curved array transducers. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Ultrasound Technology for Medical Application)
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12 pages, 4538 KiB  
Article
Design and Implementation of a New Wireless Carotid Neckband Doppler System with Wearable Ultrasound Sensors: Preliminary Results
by Ilseob Song, Jongmin Yoon, Jinbum Kang, Min Kim, Won Seuk Jang, Na-Young Shin and Yangmo Yoo
Appl. Sci. 2019, 9(11), 2202; https://doi.org/10.3390/app9112202 - 29 May 2019
Cited by 18 | Viewed by 7140
Abstract
Noninvasive monitoring of blood flow in the carotid artery is important for evaluating not only cerebrovascular but also cardiovascular diseases. In this paper, a wireless neckband ultrasound Doppler system, in which two 2.5-MHz ultrasonic sensors are utilized for acquiring Doppler signals from both [...] Read more.
Noninvasive monitoring of blood flow in the carotid artery is important for evaluating not only cerebrovascular but also cardiovascular diseases. In this paper, a wireless neckband ultrasound Doppler system, in which two 2.5-MHz ultrasonic sensors are utilized for acquiring Doppler signals from both carotid arteries, is presented for continuously evaluating blood flow dynamics. In the developed wireless neckband Doppler system, the acquired Doppler signals are quantized by 14-bit analog-to-digital-converters running at 40 MHz, and pre-processing operations (i.e., demodulation and clutter filtering) are performed in an embedded field programmable gate array chip. Then, these data are transferred to an external smartphone (i.e., Galaxy S7, Samsung Electronics Co., Suwon, Korea) via Bluetooth 2.0. Post-processing (i.e., Fourier transform and image processing) is performed using an embedded application processor in the smartphone. The developed carotid neckband Doppler system was evaluated with phantom and in vivo studies. In a phantom study, the neckband Doppler system showed comparable results with a commercial ultrasound machine in terms of peak systolic velocity and resistive index, i.e., 131.49 ± 3.97 and 0.75 ± 0.02 vs. 131.89 ± 2.06 and 0.74 ± 0.02, respectively. In addition, in the in vivo study, the neckband Doppler system successfully demonstrated its capability to continuously evaluate hemodynamics in both common carotid arteries. These results indicate that the developed wireless neckband Doppler system can be used for continuous monitoring of blood flow dynamics in the common carotid arteries in point-of-care settings. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Ultrasound Technology for Medical Application)
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