Pub Date : 2025-12-15DOI: 10.1109/TUFFC.2025.3640482
{"title":"IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control Publication Information","authors":"","doi":"10.1109/TUFFC.2025.3640482","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/TUFFC.2025.3640482","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":13322,"journal":{"name":"IEEE transactions on ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control","volume":"72 12","pages":"C2-C2"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=11300335","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145754229","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-11-24DOI: 10.1109/TUFFC.2025.3633227
{"title":"IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control Publication Information","authors":"","doi":"10.1109/TUFFC.2025.3633227","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/TUFFC.2025.3633227","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":13322,"journal":{"name":"IEEE transactions on ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control","volume":"72 11","pages":"C2-C2"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-11-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=11266974","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145584654","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-11-13DOI: 10.1109/TUFFC.2025.3632084
François Destrempes;Guy Cloutier
The purpose of this methods and concepts tutorial is to present the homodyned K-distribution (HKD) statistical modeling of the echo envelope of received radio frequency (RF) signals in the context of medical quantitative ultrasound (QUS) imaging, with the aim of explaining its physical, mathematical, and statistical foundations. Several notions and equations are recalled from previous works on HKD modeling and estimation methods. Proofs of claims are presented in Appendices that can be found in Supplementary Materials. Some descriptions have been completed or refined without modifying the main conclusions on HKD or mixtures of HKDs. Mixtures of HKDs are recalled, as well as other models proposed in previous works, such as the generalized KD (GKD), HKD with additive Gaussian noise (HKDN), and the generalized HKD (GHKD), the latter resorting to the generalized central limit theorem (CLT) in the case where the scattering cross section has infinite variance. This article also presents three innovations on the topic: 1) a revised derivation of the HKD model based on Stein’s condition to obtain an explicit rate of convergence of the CLT in the case of weakly dependent terms, corresponding to ultrasound (US) scatterers; 2) HKD imaging under frequency-domain filtering of RF signals, yielding information on second-order statistics of the echo envelope; and 3) quantitative results on the Kolmogorov distance between the HKD and other distributions (Nakagami and Rice distributions, GKD, HKDN, and GHKD) together with the domains insuring validity (i.e., statistical equivalence with a confidence level of 0.05).
{"title":"Theoretical Foundations of the Echo Envelope Statistical Modeling: A Tutorial","authors":"François Destrempes;Guy Cloutier","doi":"10.1109/TUFFC.2025.3632084","DOIUrl":"10.1109/TUFFC.2025.3632084","url":null,"abstract":"The purpose of this methods and concepts tutorial is to present the homodyned K-distribution (HKD) statistical modeling of the echo envelope of received radio frequency (RF) signals in the context of medical quantitative ultrasound (QUS) imaging, with the aim of explaining its physical, mathematical, and statistical foundations. Several notions and equations are recalled from previous works on HKD modeling and estimation methods. Proofs of claims are presented in Appendices that can be found in Supplementary Materials. Some descriptions have been completed or refined without modifying the main conclusions on HKD or mixtures of HKDs. Mixtures of HKDs are recalled, as well as other models proposed in previous works, such as the generalized KD (GKD), HKD with additive Gaussian noise (HKDN), and the generalized HKD (GHKD), the latter resorting to the generalized central limit theorem (CLT) in the case where the scattering cross section has infinite variance. This article also presents three innovations on the topic: 1) a revised derivation of the HKD model based on Stein’s condition to obtain an explicit rate of convergence of the CLT in the case of weakly dependent terms, corresponding to ultrasound (US) scatterers; 2) HKD imaging under frequency-domain filtering of RF signals, yielding information on second-order statistics of the echo envelope; and 3) quantitative results on the Kolmogorov distance between the HKD and other distributions (Nakagami and Rice distributions, GKD, HKDN, and GHKD) together with the domains insuring validity (i.e., statistical equivalence with a confidence level of 0.05).","PeriodicalId":13322,"journal":{"name":"IEEE transactions on ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control","volume":"72 12","pages":"1566-1581"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-11-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145512607","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-11-12DOI: 10.1109/TUFFC.2025.3632215
Taran Anusorn;Omar Barrera;Jack Kramer;Ian Anderson;Ziqian Yao;Vakhtang Chulukhadze;Ruochen Lu
This article presents an approach to control the operating frequency and fractional bandwidth (FBW) of miniature acoustic filters in thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN). More specifically, we used firstorder antisymmetric (A1) mode lateral-field-excited bulk acoustic wave resonators (XBARs) to achieve efficient operation at 20.5 GHz. Our technique leverages the thickness-dependent resonant frequency of A1 XBARs, combined with the in-plane anisotropic properties of 128. Y-cut TFLN, to customize filter characteristics. The implemented three-element ladder filter prototype achieves an insertion loss (IL) of only 1.79 dB and a controlled 3-dB FBW of 8.58% at 20.5 GHz, with an out-of-band (OoB) rejection greater than 14.9 dB across the entire frequency range 3 (FR3) band, while featuring a compact footprint of 0.90 × 0.74 mm2. Moreover, an eight-element filter prototype shows an IL of 3.80 dB, an FBW of 6.12% at 22.0 GHz, and a high OoB rejection of 22.97 dB, demonstrating the potential for expanding to higher order filters. As frequency allocation requirements become more stringent in future FR3 bands, our technique showcases promising capability in enabling compact and monolithic filter banks toward next-generation acoustic filters for 6G and beyond.
{"title":"Practical Demonstrations of FR3-Band Thin-Film Lithium Niobate Acoustic Filter Design","authors":"Taran Anusorn;Omar Barrera;Jack Kramer;Ian Anderson;Ziqian Yao;Vakhtang Chulukhadze;Ruochen Lu","doi":"10.1109/TUFFC.2025.3632215","DOIUrl":"10.1109/TUFFC.2025.3632215","url":null,"abstract":"This article presents an approach to control the operating frequency and fractional bandwidth (FBW) of miniature acoustic filters in thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN). More specifically, we used firstorder antisymmetric (A1) mode lateral-field-excited bulk acoustic wave resonators (XBARs) to achieve efficient operation at 20.5 GHz. Our technique leverages the thickness-dependent resonant frequency of A1 XBARs, combined with the in-plane anisotropic properties of 128. Y-cut TFLN, to customize filter characteristics. The implemented three-element ladder filter prototype achieves an insertion loss (IL) of only 1.79 dB and a controlled 3-dB FBW of 8.58% at 20.5 GHz, with an out-of-band (OoB) rejection greater than 14.9 dB across the entire frequency range 3 (FR3) band, while featuring a compact footprint of 0.90 × 0.74 mm2. Moreover, an eight-element filter prototype shows an IL of 3.80 dB, an FBW of 6.12% at 22.0 GHz, and a high OoB rejection of 22.97 dB, demonstrating the potential for expanding to higher order filters. As frequency allocation requirements become more stringent in future FR3 bands, our technique showcases promising capability in enabling compact and monolithic filter banks toward next-generation acoustic filters for 6G and beyond.","PeriodicalId":13322,"journal":{"name":"IEEE transactions on ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control","volume":"72 12","pages":"1650-1662"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-11-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145503631","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-11-11DOI: 10.1109/TUFFC.2025.3631731
Yifei Li;Hui Zhu;Yi Zeng;Shixiao W. Jiang;Xiran Cai
In focused ultrasound (FUS) therapy, passive acoustic mapping (PAM) with convex arrays is often employed to monitor the cavitation activity in the human abdomen, given their large acoustic window. However, phase aberration caused by the speed-of-sound (SoS) heterogeneity in the abdominal wall degrades the image quality, leading to inaccurate localization of the cavitation source and, hence, deteriorates the safety and efficacy level of the therapy. In this work, we derive the general solution to the wave equation in SoS heterogeneous media in polar coordinates. With the solution, we propose the real-time heterogeneous helical wave spectrum (HHWS) method to account for SoS heterogeneity in transabdominal PAM with convex arrays. In both the in silico and in vitro experiments mimicking transabdominal PAM imaging of single and multiple microbubble (MB) cavitation source(s) in humans, the results clearly demonstrated the phase aberration-correction capability of the HHWS method with improved image quality and source localization accuracy, compared with the helical wave spectrum (HWS) method for homogeneous media. A parallel implementation of the HHWS method realized a several tens of milliseconds image reconstruction speed for phase-aberration-corrected PAM in a large field of view (FOV). Combined with B-mode imaging, real-time dual-mode monitoring of MB cavitation activity in the heterogeneous medium mimicking the human abdominal wall with a single probe has been realized. These results well demonstrated the potential of the HHWS method for transabdominal PAM with convex arrays, for safe, effective, and controlled cavitation-based FUS therapies.
{"title":"Real-Time Heterogeneous Helical Wave Spectrum Method for Transabdominal Passive Acoustic Mapping","authors":"Yifei Li;Hui Zhu;Yi Zeng;Shixiao W. Jiang;Xiran Cai","doi":"10.1109/TUFFC.2025.3631731","DOIUrl":"10.1109/TUFFC.2025.3631731","url":null,"abstract":"In focused ultrasound (FUS) therapy, passive acoustic mapping (PAM) with convex arrays is often employed to monitor the cavitation activity in the human abdomen, given their large acoustic window. However, phase aberration caused by the speed-of-sound (SoS) heterogeneity in the abdominal wall degrades the image quality, leading to inaccurate localization of the cavitation source and, hence, deteriorates the safety and efficacy level of the therapy. In this work, we derive the general solution to the wave equation in SoS heterogeneous media in polar coordinates. With the solution, we propose the real-time heterogeneous helical wave spectrum (HHWS) method to account for SoS heterogeneity in transabdominal PAM with convex arrays. In both the in silico and in vitro experiments mimicking transabdominal PAM imaging of single and multiple microbubble (MB) cavitation source(s) in humans, the results clearly demonstrated the phase aberration-correction capability of the HHWS method with improved image quality and source localization accuracy, compared with the helical wave spectrum (HWS) method for homogeneous media. A parallel implementation of the HHWS method realized a several tens of milliseconds image reconstruction speed for phase-aberration-corrected PAM in a large field of view (FOV). Combined with B-mode imaging, real-time dual-mode monitoring of MB cavitation activity in the heterogeneous medium mimicking the human abdominal wall with a single probe has been realized. These results well demonstrated the potential of the HHWS method for transabdominal PAM with convex arrays, for safe, effective, and controlled cavitation-based FUS therapies.","PeriodicalId":13322,"journal":{"name":"IEEE transactions on ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control","volume":"72 12","pages":"1595-1606"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145495463","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-11-11DOI: 10.1109/TUFFC.2025.3631658
Joosje M. K. de Bakker;Janna Ruisch;Chris L. de Korte;Anne E. C. M. Saris
Cascaded dual-polarity wave (CDW) imaging enhances signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) by transmitting polarity-alternating pulse sequences, followed by decoding to reinforce coherent signals. This study assesses the in vivo feasibility of CDWs for velocity vector imaging (VVI) in the carotid artery, compared to conventional plane waves (cPWs). Two decoding strategies were evaluated: frequency domain decoding of CDW (F-CDW), offering moderate SNR improvement with reduced motion sensitivity, and time-domain decoding of CDW (T-CDW), providing higher SNR gains but larger motion sensitivity. cPW imaging was performed using constant gain (cPWCG), set patient-specific to avoid clipping, and maximum gain (cPW-HG). VVI using CDW and cPW imaging was obtained in 20 carotid arteries, including ten hemodynamic significant stenoses. A comparison was made based on SNR, percentage of reliable velocity estimates, and agreement with conventional pulsed wave Doppler. Results showed improved SNR and reliability using CDW compared to cPW-CG. The median SNR at peak systole increased from 0.9 dB (cPW-CG) to 2.8 dB (F-CDW) and 4.7 dB (T-CDW). T-CDW showed the greatest improvement, even outperforming cPW-HG (SNR = 1.2 dB) based on SNR and reliability. All methods showed similar agreement with pulsed wave Doppler. Although CDW demonstrated clear benefits, its full potential was limited by restricted gain settings to prevent clipping. CDW is particularly promising for imaging deeper-located carotid arteries, where higher gains can be applied to further enhance SNR beyond conventional plane wave techniques.
级联双极性波（CDW）成像通过传输极性交替脉冲序列，然后进行解码以增强相干信号，从而提高信噪比（SNR）。本研究评估了CDW用于颈动脉速度矢量成像（VVI）的体内可行性，并与传统的单脉冲平面波成像（cPW）进行了比较。评估了两种解码策略：频域解码（F-CDW），在降低运动灵敏度的同时提供适度的信噪比改善；时域解码（T-CDW），提供更高的信噪比增益，但更大的运动灵敏度。cPW成像采用恒定增益（cPW- cg），设置患者特异性以避免削波，以及最大增益（cPW- hg）。利用CDW和cPW成像获得了20条颈动脉的VVI，其中包括10条血流动力学显著狭窄。基于信噪比、可靠速度估计的百分比以及与常规脉冲波多普勒的一致性进行了比较。结果显示，与cPW-CG相比，CDW的信噪比和可靠性有所提高。收缩期峰值信噪比中位数从0.9 dB （cPW-CG）增加到2.8 dB （F-CDW）和4.7 dB （T-CDW）。T-CDW表现出最大的改善，甚至优于cPW-HG（信噪比= 1.2 dB）。所有方法与脉冲波多普勒的结果一致。虽然CDW显示出明显的好处，但它的全部潜力受到限制增益设置，以防止剪切。CDW尤其适用于颈动脉深部成像，与传统平面波技术相比，更高的增益可以进一步提高信噪比。
{"title":"Cascaded Plane Wave Ultrasound Velocity Vector Imaging: In Vivo Feasibility in Carotid Arteries","authors":"Joosje M. K. de Bakker;Janna Ruisch;Chris L. de Korte;Anne E. C. M. Saris","doi":"10.1109/TUFFC.2025.3631658","DOIUrl":"10.1109/TUFFC.2025.3631658","url":null,"abstract":"Cascaded dual-polarity wave (CDW) imaging enhances signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) by transmitting polarity-alternating pulse sequences, followed by decoding to reinforce coherent signals. This study assesses the in vivo feasibility of CDWs for velocity vector imaging (VVI) in the carotid artery, compared to conventional plane waves (cPWs). Two decoding strategies were evaluated: frequency domain decoding of CDW (F-CDW), offering moderate SNR improvement with reduced motion sensitivity, and time-domain decoding of CDW (T-CDW), providing higher SNR gains but larger motion sensitivity. cPW imaging was performed using constant gain (cPWCG), set patient-specific to avoid clipping, and maximum gain (cPW-HG). VVI using CDW and cPW imaging was obtained in 20 carotid arteries, including ten hemodynamic significant stenoses. A comparison was made based on SNR, percentage of reliable velocity estimates, and agreement with conventional pulsed wave Doppler. Results showed improved SNR and reliability using CDW compared to cPW-CG. The median SNR at peak systole increased from 0.9 dB (cPW-CG) to 2.8 dB (F-CDW) and 4.7 dB (T-CDW). T-CDW showed the greatest improvement, even outperforming cPW-HG (SNR = 1.2 dB) based on SNR and reliability. All methods showed similar agreement with pulsed wave Doppler. Although CDW demonstrated clear benefits, its full potential was limited by restricted gain settings to prevent clipping. CDW is particularly promising for imaging deeper-located carotid arteries, where higher gains can be applied to further enhance SNR beyond conventional plane wave techniques.","PeriodicalId":13322,"journal":{"name":"IEEE transactions on ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control","volume":"72 12","pages":"1607-1617"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=11240238","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145495444","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-11-07DOI: 10.1109/TUFFC.2025.3625770
Daniel Sarno;Christian Baker;Bajram Zeqiri
False-positive indications in breast cancer screening cause pain and anxiety for patients and are a time and cost waste to healthcare systems. New quantitative ultrasound (QUS) scanners aim to measure intrinsic acoustic properties of soft tissues to aid better clinical decision-making. This study details the performance characterization of a novel phase-insensitive ultrasound computed tomography (Q-UCT) scanner, developed at U.K. National Physical Laboratory (NPL), for quantitative acoustic attenuation coefficient mapping of the breast. Scans of multiple commercially sourced anthropomorphic breast phantoms were acquired, with the results being compared to the X-ray computed tomography (XCT) imagery and ground-truth attenuation coefficients obtained from measurements of the constituent phantom materials. The novel system demonstrated the ability to detect the presence of inserts as small as 4 mm in diameter and measure the intrinsic attenuation of larger inserts and host materials with attenuation coefficients ranging from 0.7 to 4.1 dB cm−1 at 3.2 MHz. For the host materials, agreement with the ground-truth values of attenuation lies within the expanded measurement uncertainties of the ground-truth values.
乳腺癌筛查中的假阳性指征会给患者带来痛苦和焦虑，对医疗保健系统来说是时间和成本的浪费。新的定量超声扫描仪旨在测量软组织的内在声学特性，以帮助更好的临床决策。这项研究详细介绍了一种新型的相位不敏感超声计算机断层扫描（Q-UCT）扫描仪的性能特征，该扫描仪由英国国家物理实验室开发，用于定量的乳房声衰减系数测绘。获得了多个商业来源的拟人化乳房幻影的扫描，并将结果与x射线计算机断层成像和从组成幻影材料的测量中获得的地面真值衰减系数进行了比较。该新型系统能够检测直径小至4毫米的插入物的存在，并测量较大插入物和主体材料的固有衰减，衰减系数在3.2 MHz下为0.7 dB cm-1至4.1 dB cm-1。对于宿主材料，衰减与地真值的一致性在于地真值的扩展测量不确定度。
{"title":"Quantitative Acoustic Attenuation Scanning Using a Phase-Insensitive Ultrasound Computed Tomography System","authors":"Daniel Sarno;Christian Baker;Bajram Zeqiri","doi":"10.1109/TUFFC.2025.3625770","DOIUrl":"10.1109/TUFFC.2025.3625770","url":null,"abstract":"False-positive indications in breast cancer screening cause pain and anxiety for patients and are a time and cost waste to healthcare systems. New quantitative ultrasound (QUS) scanners aim to measure intrinsic acoustic properties of soft tissues to aid better clinical decision-making. This study details the performance characterization of a novel phase-insensitive ultrasound computed tomography (Q-UCT) scanner, developed at U.K. National Physical Laboratory (NPL), for quantitative acoustic attenuation coefficient mapping of the breast. Scans of multiple commercially sourced anthropomorphic breast phantoms were acquired, with the results being compared to the X-ray computed tomography (XCT) imagery and ground-truth attenuation coefficients obtained from measurements of the constituent phantom materials. The novel system demonstrated the ability to detect the presence of inserts as small as 4 mm in diameter and measure the intrinsic attenuation of larger inserts and host materials with attenuation coefficients ranging from 0.7 to 4.1 dB cm−1 at 3.2 MHz. For the host materials, agreement with the ground-truth values of attenuation lies within the expanded measurement uncertainties of the ground-truth values.","PeriodicalId":13322,"journal":{"name":"IEEE transactions on ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control","volume":"72 12","pages":"1582-1594"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-11-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145471142","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-11-07DOI: 10.1109/TUFFC.2025.3630483
Rouzbeh Molaei Imenabadi;Gregory R. Thoreson;Katherine G. Brown;Dinesh Bhatia
Imaging of targeted organs, such as the urinary bladder, could be transformative for preventive healthcare and early disease diagnosis when used to assess their real-time function. However, wearable and portable ultrasound (US) imaging systems often face constraints related to power consumption, form factor, cost, and signal resolution, particularly for deep tissues like the bladder. High-accuracy platforms with large channel counts can generate data streams of up to 10 GB/s, posing significant challenges in reducing computational complexity, achieving power efficiency, and maintaining wireless connectivity. Recent advancements in wearable US sensors have demonstrated potential for low-power, unobtrusive solutions but often fail to meet the accuracy and efficiency needed in clinical settings. This work presents an algorithm-centric proof of concept that reconstructs missing US channels through field-programmable gate array (FPGA)-accelerated deep learning, effectively doubling the imaging aperture while halving analog front-end requirements. We developed a lightweight U-Net convolutional neural network (L-UNET) with 222 609 parameters, specifically optimized for sparse-array RF data reconstruction. The network is deployed on a deep learning processing unit (DPU) using mixed quantization-aware training (Mixed-QAT) that selectively applies 8-bit integer precision while preserving two critical layers at 16-bit floating point (FP), achieving mean-squared error (MSE) of 1.48 $times$ 10 compared to 1.22 $times$ 10 for 32-bit FP. The FPGA implementation leverages a single-core accelerator, executing inference in 221 ms/frame with deterministic latency suitable for real-time reconstruction. By processing only odd-indexed physical channels and inferring even-indexed channels through the convolutional neural network (CNN), our approach maintains B-mode image quality (peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) >18 dB and structural similarity index (SSIM) > 0.5) while reducing data acquisition complexity. The system achieves 0.918-W average power consumption in a 32-channel configuration, demonstrating that CNNbased sparse-array reconstruction on embedded FPGAs offers a viable path toward fully integrated US monitoring systems.
{"title":"FPGA-Accelerated CNN Reconstruction for Low-Power Sparse-Array Ultrasound Imaging","authors":"Rouzbeh Molaei Imenabadi;Gregory R. Thoreson;Katherine G. Brown;Dinesh Bhatia","doi":"10.1109/TUFFC.2025.3630483","DOIUrl":"10.1109/TUFFC.2025.3630483","url":null,"abstract":"Imaging of targeted organs, such as the urinary bladder, could be transformative for preventive healthcare and early disease diagnosis when used to assess their real-time function. However, wearable and portable ultrasound (US) imaging systems often face constraints related to power consumption, form factor, cost, and signal resolution, particularly for deep tissues like the bladder. High-accuracy platforms with large channel counts can generate data streams of up to 10 GB/s, posing significant challenges in reducing computational complexity, achieving power efficiency, and maintaining wireless connectivity. Recent advancements in wearable US sensors have demonstrated potential for low-power, unobtrusive solutions but often fail to meet the accuracy and efficiency needed in clinical settings. This work presents an algorithm-centric proof of concept that reconstructs missing US channels through field-programmable gate array (FPGA)-accelerated deep learning, effectively doubling the imaging aperture while halving analog front-end requirements. We developed a lightweight U-Net convolutional neural network (L-UNET) with 222 609 parameters, specifically optimized for sparse-array RF data reconstruction. The network is deployed on a deep learning processing unit (DPU) using mixed quantization-aware training (Mixed-QAT) that selectively applies 8-bit integer precision while preserving two critical layers at 16-bit floating point (FP), achieving mean-squared error (MSE) of 1.48 <inline-formula> <tex-math>$times$ </tex-math></inline-formula> 10 compared to 1.22 <inline-formula> <tex-math>$times$ </tex-math></inline-formula> 10 for 32-bit FP. The FPGA implementation leverages a single-core accelerator, executing inference in 221 ms/frame with deterministic latency suitable for real-time reconstruction. By processing only odd-indexed physical channels and inferring even-indexed channels through the convolutional neural network (CNN), our approach maintains B-mode image quality (peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) >18 dB and structural similarity index (SSIM) > 0.5) while reducing data acquisition complexity. The system achieves 0.918-W average power consumption in a 32-channel configuration, demonstrating that CNNbased sparse-array reconstruction on embedded FPGAs offers a viable path toward fully integrated US monitoring systems.","PeriodicalId":13322,"journal":{"name":"IEEE transactions on ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control","volume":"72 12","pages":"1618-1636"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-11-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145471111","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-11-03DOI: 10.1109/TUFFC.2025.3628117
T. Zhu;E. Lefeuvre;A. Bosseboeuf;E. Herth;D. Bouville;R. Belmekki;A. Brenes
This article presents the design, simulation, fabrication, and characterization of the first “bell plate” microelectromechanical resonators in silicon-oninsulator (SOI) technology. These resonators are actuated by electrostatic force and exhibit a high-quality factor of up to 160 at 180 kHz resonant frequency, resulting in an f × Q product exceeding 28 GHz. Several designs were explored, and all (2, 0)-mode resonators systematically outperformed the first clamped-free mode in terms of Q-factor. This mode was investigated through finite element simulations and experimental measurements and compared to the first clamped-free mode. The resonators were actuated with dc lower than 1 V and ac lower than 250 mV at resonance, and their mechanical motion was measured by laser Doppler vibrometry. Dynamic characterization was performed both in open-loop and closed-loop configurations. The temperature coefficient of frequency (TCF) of the (2, 0)-mode is mainly dominated by the silicon properties, leading to a value equal to –48 ppm/°C. These results demonstrate that MEMS resonators with bell plate geometries are promising for high-Q applications such as sensing and time references.
{"title":"Novel Low-Voltage Silicon MEMS Resonators With High f×Q Product Inspired From Bell Plates","authors":"T. Zhu;E. Lefeuvre;A. Bosseboeuf;E. Herth;D. Bouville;R. Belmekki;A. Brenes","doi":"10.1109/TUFFC.2025.3628117","DOIUrl":"10.1109/TUFFC.2025.3628117","url":null,"abstract":"This article presents the design, simulation, fabrication, and characterization of the first “bell plate” microelectromechanical resonators in silicon-oninsulator (SOI) technology. These resonators are actuated by electrostatic force and exhibit a high-quality factor of up to 160 at 180 kHz resonant frequency, resulting in an f × Q product exceeding 28 GHz. Several designs were explored, and all (2, 0)-mode resonators systematically outperformed the first clamped-free mode in terms of Q-factor. This mode was investigated through finite element simulations and experimental measurements and compared to the first clamped-free mode. The resonators were actuated with dc lower than 1 V and ac lower than 250 mV at resonance, and their mechanical motion was measured by laser Doppler vibrometry. Dynamic characterization was performed both in open-loop and closed-loop configurations. The temperature coefficient of frequency (TCF) of the (2, 0)-mode is mainly dominated by the silicon properties, leading to a value equal to –48 ppm/°C. These results demonstrate that MEMS resonators with bell plate geometries are promising for high-Q applications such as sensing and time references.","PeriodicalId":13322,"journal":{"name":"IEEE transactions on ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control","volume":"72 11","pages":"1533-1542"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-11-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145437615","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-31DOI: 10.1109/TUFFC.2025.3627525
Benjamin N. Frey;Dongwoon Hyun;Walter Simson;Louise Zhuang;Hoda S. Hashemi;Martin Schneider;Jeremy J. Dahl
UltraFlex is an iterative model-based ultrasonic flexible-array shape calibration framework that uses automatic differentiation. This work evaluates array shape calibration model performance while examining multiple image quality metrics: speckle brightness, envelope entropy, coherence factor, lag-one coherence, common-midpoint correlation coefficient (CMCC), and common-midpoint phase error (CMPE). The accuracy of these image quality metrics was evaluated on simulated phantoms using a variety of array shapes. Experimental phantom and in vivo liver datasets were also investigated using transducers with known geometries. While speckle brightness, envelope entropy, and coherence factor enable model convergence under many conditions, lag-one coherence, CMCC, and CMPE enable more accurate element position estimations and improved visual ultrasound image focusing quality. Furthermore, the models based on the CMCC and phase-error quality metrics are the most robust against additive white noise while achieving median mean Euclidean errors (MEEs) of 3.7 μm for simulation, 29.7 μm for phantom, and 69.0 μm for in vivo liver data. These array shape calibration results show promise for future development of experimental flexible- and wearableultrasonic arrays.
{"title":"UltraFlex: Iterative Model-Based Ultrasonic Flexible-Array Shape Calibration","authors":"Benjamin N. Frey;Dongwoon Hyun;Walter Simson;Louise Zhuang;Hoda S. Hashemi;Martin Schneider;Jeremy J. Dahl","doi":"10.1109/TUFFC.2025.3627525","DOIUrl":"10.1109/TUFFC.2025.3627525","url":null,"abstract":"UltraFlex is an iterative model-based ultrasonic flexible-array shape calibration framework that uses automatic differentiation. This work evaluates array shape calibration model performance while examining multiple image quality metrics: speckle brightness, envelope entropy, coherence factor, lag-one coherence, common-midpoint correlation coefficient (CMCC), and common-midpoint phase error (CMPE). The accuracy of these image quality metrics was evaluated on simulated phantoms using a variety of array shapes. Experimental phantom and in vivo liver datasets were also investigated using transducers with known geometries. While speckle brightness, envelope entropy, and coherence factor enable model convergence under many conditions, lag-one coherence, CMCC, and CMPE enable more accurate element position estimations and improved visual ultrasound image focusing quality. Furthermore, the models based on the CMCC and phase-error quality metrics are the most robust against additive white noise while achieving median mean Euclidean errors (MEEs) of 3.7 μm for simulation, 29.7 μm for phantom, and 69.0 μm for in vivo liver data. These array shape calibration results show promise for future development of experimental flexible- and wearableultrasonic arrays.","PeriodicalId":13322,"journal":{"name":"IEEE transactions on ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control","volume":"72 11","pages":"1462-1475"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-10-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145421559","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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