Pub Date : 2025-11-11DOI: 10.1109/OJUFFC.2025.3631426
Anna V. Phillips;Cherie M. Kuzmiak;Doreen Steed;Caterina M. Gallippi
Viscoelastic response (VisR) ultrasound has been developed by our group to interrogate tissue stiffness and viscosity. VisR has several potential advantages for breast cancer diagnostic imaging such being non-invasive and low-cost. Because ultrasound can penetrate dense breasts more effectively than mammograms, it may improve the detection of malignant masses in women with dense breasts. VisR-based estimates of stiffness, viscosity, and anisotropy have been shown in our preliminary studies to discriminate malignant and benign breast lesions. However, a potential limitation of VisR could be dependence on tissue pre-loading from applied surface compression by the practitioner. We conducted an IRB-approved clinical study of 20 women with no known breast pathologies to assess the impact of compression on VisR measurements of peak displacement (PD), relative elasticity (RE), relative viscosity (RV), and degree of anisotropy (DoA). Participants were between the ages of 30-90, and 10/20 had mammographically dense breasts. We found that surface compression significantly affected measurements of PD, RE, and RV in breast tissue, in vivo. In particular, in women with dense breasts, stiffness (via PD and RE) increased significantly with applied compression. DoA of PD, RE, and RV increased, decreased, or stayed the same with compression. No significant difference was found in DoA with compression between the breast density groups. Based on these findings, we recommend that surface compression be standardized and monitored when using VisR for clinical breast imaging, especially in women with dense breasts. Further studies are needed to identify an optimal strain range for VisR measurement repeatability.
{"title":"Surface Compression Alters in Vivo VisR Stiffness, Viscosity, and Anisotropy Measurements in Human Breast","authors":"Anna V. Phillips;Cherie M. Kuzmiak;Doreen Steed;Caterina M. Gallippi","doi":"10.1109/OJUFFC.2025.3631426","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/OJUFFC.2025.3631426","url":null,"abstract":"Viscoelastic response (VisR) ultrasound has been developed by our group to interrogate tissue stiffness and viscosity. VisR has several potential advantages for breast cancer diagnostic imaging such being non-invasive and low-cost. Because ultrasound can penetrate dense breasts more effectively than mammograms, it may improve the detection of malignant masses in women with dense breasts. VisR-based estimates of stiffness, viscosity, and anisotropy have been shown in our preliminary studies to discriminate malignant and benign breast lesions. However, a potential limitation of VisR could be dependence on tissue pre-loading from applied surface compression by the practitioner. We conducted an IRB-approved clinical study of 20 women with no known breast pathologies to assess the impact of compression on VisR measurements of peak displacement (PD), relative elasticity (RE), relative viscosity (RV), and degree of anisotropy (DoA). Participants were between the ages of 30-90, and 10/20 had mammographically dense breasts. We found that surface compression significantly affected measurements of PD, RE, and RV in breast tissue, in vivo. In particular, in women with dense breasts, stiffness (via PD and RE) increased significantly with applied compression. DoA of PD, RE, and RV increased, decreased, or stayed the same with compression. No significant difference was found in DoA with compression between the breast density groups. Based on these findings, we recommend that surface compression be standardized and monitored when using VisR for clinical breast imaging, especially in women with dense breasts. Further studies are needed to identify an optimal strain range for VisR measurement repeatability.","PeriodicalId":73301,"journal":{"name":"IEEE open journal of ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control","volume":"5 ","pages":"242-253"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=11240139","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145674877","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","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/OJUFFC.2025.3630590
Lorenzo Capineri
The design of electronic systems for ultrasonic guided wave structural health monitoring requires a dedicated electronic front-end considering the peculiarities of this application field. The characteristics of ultrasonic guided wave piezoelectric transducers are first decided based on the operating environment, the material of the structures and their dimensions, as well as the definition of connections and diagnostics of the transducers. Another specific feature of electronic design is for systems operating both in passive mode for impact detection and in active mode for damage detection and positioning. These two operating modes correspond to different analog electronic chains because the received signals have different amplitude levels and frequency spectrum. The paper will review the main building blocks of the electronic system with a focus on analog front-end electronic circuits and propose a new modular architecture for the electronics to address different SHM scenarios.
{"title":"Ultrasonic Guided Wave Transducers and Electronic System Design for Structural Health Monitoring","authors":"Lorenzo Capineri","doi":"10.1109/OJUFFC.2025.3630590","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/OJUFFC.2025.3630590","url":null,"abstract":"The design of electronic systems for ultrasonic guided wave structural health monitoring requires a dedicated electronic front-end considering the peculiarities of this application field. The characteristics of ultrasonic guided wave piezoelectric transducers are first decided based on the operating environment, the material of the structures and their dimensions, as well as the definition of connections and diagnostics of the transducers. Another specific feature of electronic design is for systems operating both in passive mode for impact detection and in active mode for damage detection and positioning. These two operating modes correspond to different analog electronic chains because the received signals have different amplitude levels and frequency spectrum. The paper will review the main building blocks of the electronic system with a focus on analog front-end electronic circuits and propose a new modular architecture for the electronics to address different SHM scenarios.","PeriodicalId":73301,"journal":{"name":"IEEE open journal of ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control","volume":"5 ","pages":"214-227"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-11-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=11232463","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145560688","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-07DOI: 10.1109/OJUFFC.2025.3618637
Jeffrey A. Ketterling;Geraldi Wahyulaksana;Marisa S. Bazzi;Hadi Wiputra
Ultrasound simulations of blood flow are useful to evaluate or optimize new transmit schemes, transducer geometries, or post processing methods such as vector flow. In cases of complex flow, a flow domain model (FDM) is often used to define the time history of the velocity field. Scatterers representing blood cells are seeded in the flow field and their positions are updated each time step after spatial and temporal interpolation of the FDM velocity field. At each time step, the scatterers are passed to an ultrasound simulator to generate synthetic ultrasound backscatter data. Here, a technique is described to continuously track, without temporal discontinuities, a stable concentration of scatterers representing complex flow with reverse, rotational, out-of-plane and/or helical features. The unique aspects of the tracking approach are 1) refresh zones at the input and output flow ports that randomly reseed scatterers each time step, 2) a stagnation threshold to remove low velocity orphaned scatterers near the boundary of the flow field, and 3) continuous tracking of particles in the full flow volume. The method can be adapted to any FDM, ultrasound simulator, transducer, or transmission scheme. To demonstrate the overall pipeline, we use the results of a prior fluid structure interaction (FSI) model of a mouse aorta to generate a continuous high-speed, plane-wave ultrasound simulation over 4 cardiac cycles with a 15-MHz linear array. The data were processed to produce vector flow to validate that the ultrasound vector-flow field was consistent with the FSI velocity field.
{"title":"A Technique to Track Scatterers for Continuous High-Speed Plane-Wave Ultrasound Simulations Based on a Fluid Domain Model","authors":"Jeffrey A. Ketterling;Geraldi Wahyulaksana;Marisa S. Bazzi;Hadi Wiputra","doi":"10.1109/OJUFFC.2025.3618637","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/OJUFFC.2025.3618637","url":null,"abstract":"Ultrasound simulations of blood flow are useful to evaluate or optimize new transmit schemes, transducer geometries, or post processing methods such as vector flow. In cases of complex flow, a flow domain model (FDM) is often used to define the time history of the velocity field. Scatterers representing blood cells are seeded in the flow field and their positions are updated each time step after spatial and temporal interpolation of the FDM velocity field. At each time step, the scatterers are passed to an ultrasound simulator to generate synthetic ultrasound backscatter data. Here, a technique is described to continuously track, without temporal discontinuities, a stable concentration of scatterers representing complex flow with reverse, rotational, out-of-plane and/or helical features. The unique aspects of the tracking approach are 1) refresh zones at the input and output flow ports that randomly reseed scatterers each time step, 2) a stagnation threshold to remove low velocity orphaned scatterers near the boundary of the flow field, and 3) continuous tracking of particles in the full flow volume. The method can be adapted to any FDM, ultrasound simulator, transducer, or transmission scheme. To demonstrate the overall pipeline, we use the results of a prior fluid structure interaction (FSI) model of a mouse aorta to generate a continuous high-speed, plane-wave ultrasound simulation over 4 cardiac cycles with a 15-MHz linear array. The data were processed to produce vector flow to validate that the ultrasound vector-flow field was consistent with the FSI velocity field.","PeriodicalId":73301,"journal":{"name":"IEEE open journal of ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control","volume":"5 ","pages":"166-175"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=11195197","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145315312","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-07DOI: 10.1109/OJUFFC.2025.3618629
Muhammad Saad Khan;Victoria Bulycheva;Charlotte Ferworn;Omar Falou;Eric M. Strohm;Pinunta Nittayacharn;Elizabeth Berndl;Raffi Karshafian;Agata A. Exner;Michael C. Kolios
Nanobubbles (NBs) have been investigated as ultrasound contrast agents and drug delivery carriers in medical applications. Previous studies have reported the efficacy of NBs in imaging and therapy. However, ultrasound (US) exposure parameters for stable and inertial cavitation of NBs need to be investigated. This study examines passive cavitation detection of ultrasound signatures from two types of NBs across three pressure ranges using passive cavitation detection (PCD), aiming to investigate their cavitation behaviour with and without the inclusion of the chemotherapeutic drug, Doxorubicin (HDox). We compared the power spectral density (PSD) of non-drug loaded Propylene-Glycol Glycerol (PGG) NBs and HDox NBs under 300 kPa, 600 kPa, and 900 kPa pressures at 1 MHz fundamental frequency and 1% duty cycle. Our results indicate that NBs exhibit stable cavitation at 300 kPa, while a mix of inertial and stable cavitation occur at 600 and 900 kPa. The loading of NBs with HDox affects their acoustic activity. HDox NBs exhibit higher acoustic activity at 300 kPa, but their PCD signal profile becomes similar to PGG NBs at 600 kPa and 900 kPa. A numerical model was used to gain additional insight into some of the characteristics of the NB power spectra observed. Our simulations indicate that nonlinear bubble oscillations are characterized by distinctly pronounced harmonics, particularly the third harmonic, with this effect being even more prominent in smaller bubbles and lower ultrasound amplitudes. These findings will help determine ultrasound pulse parameters in imaging and therapeutic applications.
{"title":"Evaluating the Effect of Drug Loading on the Acoustic Response of Nanobubbles in Stable and Inertial Cavitation Regimes","authors":"Muhammad Saad Khan;Victoria Bulycheva;Charlotte Ferworn;Omar Falou;Eric M. Strohm;Pinunta Nittayacharn;Elizabeth Berndl;Raffi Karshafian;Agata A. Exner;Michael C. Kolios","doi":"10.1109/OJUFFC.2025.3618629","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/OJUFFC.2025.3618629","url":null,"abstract":"Nanobubbles (NBs) have been investigated as ultrasound contrast agents and drug delivery carriers in medical applications. Previous studies have reported the efficacy of NBs in imaging and therapy. However, ultrasound (US) exposure parameters for stable and inertial cavitation of NBs need to be investigated. This study examines passive cavitation detection of ultrasound signatures from two types of NBs across three pressure ranges using passive cavitation detection (PCD), aiming to investigate their cavitation behaviour with and without the inclusion of the chemotherapeutic drug, Doxorubicin (HDox). We compared the power spectral density (PSD) of non-drug loaded Propylene-Glycol Glycerol (PGG) NBs and HDox NBs under 300 kPa, 600 kPa, and 900 kPa pressures at 1 MHz fundamental frequency and 1% duty cycle. Our results indicate that NBs exhibit stable cavitation at 300 kPa, while a mix of inertial and stable cavitation occur at 600 and 900 kPa. The loading of NBs with HDox affects their acoustic activity. HDox NBs exhibit higher acoustic activity at 300 kPa, but their PCD signal profile becomes similar to PGG NBs at 600 kPa and 900 kPa. A numerical model was used to gain additional insight into some of the characteristics of the NB power spectra observed. Our simulations indicate that nonlinear bubble oscillations are characterized by distinctly pronounced harmonics, particularly the third harmonic, with this effect being even more prominent in smaller bubbles and lower ultrasound amplitudes. These findings will help determine ultrasound pulse parameters in imaging and therapeutic applications.","PeriodicalId":73301,"journal":{"name":"IEEE open journal of ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control","volume":"5 ","pages":"190-203"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=11195190","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145352198","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-03DOI: 10.1109/OJUFFC.2025.3617425
Hatim Belgharbi;Francisco Santibanez;Paul A. Dayton;Gianmarco F. Pinton
3D ultrasound localization microscopy (ULM) allows the extraction of anatomical and functional representations of vascular networks with a spatial resolution beyond the diffraction limit ($sim lambda $ /10) by localizing injected microbubble (MB) contrast agents and tracking their positions over time. To advance this technology towards clinical diagnostics, the ability to obtain a large field of view (FOV) becomes a pressing necessity. One solution for large FOV imaging is automated stitching/compounding of multiple volume acquisitions. This is challenging for full-brain imaging, as the acquisition of images through the skull requires parallel positioning of the transducer surface relative to the skull to optimize ultrasound transmission. Herein, we demonstrate an automated positioning system that relies on predefined optimized orientations, enabling fast acquisition and positioning for rapid full-brain imaging. As an example of expanded FOV application, we achieved non-invasive full-brain imaging of an 8-week-old rat by collecting data across 11 transducer positions. To ensure optimal acoustic penetration through the intact skull, the transducer orientation was robotically positioned. We compared this approach with pure transducer translation. Additionally, we acquired whole-brain vasculature images from 4-week-old rats using 24 100-second scans of optimized transducer positions, comparing these results to a single-position 2400-second scan. Automated robotic compounding enabled the acquisition of full-brain vascular information while minimizing acquisition dead time. Optimized transducer angles enhanced the vascular network visualization across the brain, including challenging areas such as the cerebellum (10x improvement) and hindbrain (3.5x improvement). Moreover, our multi-position acquisition method allowed us to capture approximately four times more vascular volume transcranially, covering the entire rat brain, compared to the ~1 cm3 typically obtained with single-position acquisitions using the same transducer. This work demonstrates the benefit of automated robot-assisted multi-angle/multi-position acquisitions in ULM to acquire a volumetric field of view larger than otherwise possible with a single position acquisition, especially those through the skull.
{"title":"Robotic Compounding for Whole-Brain Non-Invasive 3D Ultrasound Localization Microscopy","authors":"Hatim Belgharbi;Francisco Santibanez;Paul A. Dayton;Gianmarco F. Pinton","doi":"10.1109/OJUFFC.2025.3617425","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/OJUFFC.2025.3617425","url":null,"abstract":"3D ultrasound localization microscopy (ULM) allows the extraction of anatomical and functional representations of vascular networks with a spatial resolution beyond the diffraction limit (<inline-formula> <tex-math>$sim lambda $ </tex-math></inline-formula>/10) by localizing injected microbubble (MB) contrast agents and tracking their positions over time. To advance this technology towards clinical diagnostics, the ability to obtain a large field of view (FOV) becomes a pressing necessity. One solution for large FOV imaging is automated stitching/compounding of multiple volume acquisitions. This is challenging for full-brain imaging, as the acquisition of images through the skull requires parallel positioning of the transducer surface relative to the skull to optimize ultrasound transmission. Herein, we demonstrate an automated positioning system that relies on predefined optimized orientations, enabling fast acquisition and positioning for rapid full-brain imaging. As an example of expanded FOV application, we achieved non-invasive full-brain imaging of an 8-week-old rat by collecting data across 11 transducer positions. To ensure optimal acoustic penetration through the intact skull, the transducer orientation was robotically positioned. We compared this approach with pure transducer translation. Additionally, we acquired whole-brain vasculature images from 4-week-old rats using 24 100-second scans of optimized transducer positions, comparing these results to a single-position 2400-second scan. Automated robotic compounding enabled the acquisition of full-brain vascular information while minimizing acquisition dead time. Optimized transducer angles enhanced the vascular network visualization across the brain, including challenging areas such as the cerebellum (10x improvement) and hindbrain (3.5x improvement). Moreover, our multi-position acquisition method allowed us to capture approximately four times more vascular volume transcranially, covering the entire rat brain, compared to the ~1 cm3 typically obtained with single-position acquisitions using the same transducer. This work demonstrates the benefit of automated robot-assisted multi-angle/multi-position acquisitions in ULM to acquire a volumetric field of view larger than otherwise possible with a single position acquisition, especially those through the skull.","PeriodicalId":73301,"journal":{"name":"IEEE open journal of ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control","volume":"5 ","pages":"204-213"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-10-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=11192505","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145405276","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-09-23DOI: 10.1109/OJUFFC.2025.3613275
Sabiq Muhtadi;Keita A. Yokoyama;Caterina M. Gallippi
This study evaluates the potential for interrogating the Young’s elastic moduli in anisotropic media, including tissue, using Double Profile Intersection (DoPIo) ultrasound. DoPIo is an on-axis acoustic radiation force (ARF)-based elasticity imaging method that quantifies shear elasticity without relying on shear wave propagation. It is hypothesized that by applying a range of ARF excitations that are not perpendicular to the axis of symmetry (AoS) of transversely isotropic (TI) materials and monitoring the resultant variation in DoPIo-measured elasticity versus excitation angle, the Young’s elastic modulus may be interrogated in addition to the shear elastic modulus. The hypothesis was tested in silico, and results suggested that while DoPIo outcomes measured at normal (90°) ARF-AoS incidence were related to the shear elastic modulus alone, variation in DoPIo-derived elasticity over ARF-AoS incidence angle (defined as $Delta textit {Elasticity}$ ) exhibited a strong linear correlation with the longitudinal Young’s modulus (${E}_{L}$ ). The results suggest that ${E}_{L}$ evaluated by the rate of change of $Delta textit {Elasticity}$ with ARF-AoS incidence angle may serve as a novel biomarker for characterizing elastically anisotropic tissues such as kidney, skeletal muscle, and breast.
{"title":"Double Profile Intersection (DoPIo) Ultrasound With Acoustic Radiation Force Tilting Interrogates Young’s Modulus in Transversely Isotropic Media: An In Silico Study","authors":"Sabiq Muhtadi;Keita A. Yokoyama;Caterina M. Gallippi","doi":"10.1109/OJUFFC.2025.3613275","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/OJUFFC.2025.3613275","url":null,"abstract":"This study evaluates the potential for interrogating the Young’s elastic moduli in anisotropic media, including tissue, using Double Profile Intersection (DoPIo) ultrasound. DoPIo is an on-axis acoustic radiation force (ARF)-based elasticity imaging method that quantifies shear elasticity without relying on shear wave propagation. It is hypothesized that by applying a range of ARF excitations that are not perpendicular to the axis of symmetry (AoS) of transversely isotropic (TI) materials and monitoring the resultant variation in DoPIo-measured elasticity versus excitation angle, the Young’s elastic modulus may be interrogated in addition to the shear elastic modulus. The hypothesis was tested in silico, and results suggested that while DoPIo outcomes measured at normal (90°) ARF-AoS incidence were related to the shear elastic modulus alone, variation in DoPIo-derived elasticity over ARF-AoS incidence angle (defined as <inline-formula> <tex-math>$Delta textit {Elasticity}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>) exhibited a strong linear correlation with the longitudinal Young’s modulus (<inline-formula> <tex-math>${E}_{L}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>). The results suggest that <inline-formula> <tex-math>${E}_{L}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> evaluated by the rate of change of <inline-formula> <tex-math>$Delta textit {Elasticity}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> with ARF-AoS incidence angle may serve as a novel biomarker for characterizing elastically anisotropic tissues such as kidney, skeletal muscle, and breast.","PeriodicalId":73301,"journal":{"name":"IEEE open journal of ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control","volume":"5 ","pages":"161-165"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-09-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=11176129","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145210158","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-09-23DOI: 10.1109/OJUFFC.2025.3613273
Franz Richter;Edgar Manfred Gustav Dorausch;Cornelius Kühnöl;Pascal Stöver;Omid Chaghaneh;Julian Kober;Tönnis Trittler;Paul-Henry Koop;Klaus Knobloch;Jochen Hampe;Gerhard Fettweis;Moritz Herzog;Richard Nauber
Point-of-Care Ultrasound (PoCUS) devices have the potential to enable safe, fast and cost-efficient medical imaging, which can democratize access to medical diagnostics. However, achieving high image quality and real-time performance despite the significant resource constraints of mobile devices is essential for clinical adoption. Fourier-Based Imaging (FBI) is emerging as an alternative to the simple and well established delay-and-sum (DAS) beamforming, as it promises improved image quality albeit higher computational effort. This work investigates an efficient implementation of FBI and evaluates the performance on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 system-on-chip (SoC) CPU and GPU using a synthetic radiofrequency (RF) ultrasound dataset. CPU profiling identified the real-to-complex (r2c) Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) as a primary bottleneck, with optimizations reducing runtime from 2993 ms to 892 ms per frame. GPU acceleration via the clFFT library and a custom OpenCL kernel for k-space processing, enhanced through kernel fusion, constant memory usage, and instruction-level tuning, further reduced runtime to 388 ms, a 2.86x speed-up over the optimized CPU version. Although 30 fps real-time performance was not reached under these imaging parameters (2.58 fps), reducing the number of transmitters increased throughput to approximately 6 fps at the expense of image fidelity. These results demonstrate the mobile GPU’s potential for FBI and suggest that real-time execution on next-generation SoCs is within reach.
{"title":"Investigation of Real-Time Capabilities of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 for a Fourier-Based Imaging Algorithm","authors":"Franz Richter;Edgar Manfred Gustav Dorausch;Cornelius Kühnöl;Pascal Stöver;Omid Chaghaneh;Julian Kober;Tönnis Trittler;Paul-Henry Koop;Klaus Knobloch;Jochen Hampe;Gerhard Fettweis;Moritz Herzog;Richard Nauber","doi":"10.1109/OJUFFC.2025.3613273","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/OJUFFC.2025.3613273","url":null,"abstract":"Point-of-Care Ultrasound (PoCUS) devices have the potential to enable safe, fast and cost-efficient medical imaging, which can democratize access to medical diagnostics. However, achieving high image quality and real-time performance despite the significant resource constraints of mobile devices is essential for clinical adoption. Fourier-Based Imaging (FBI) is emerging as an alternative to the simple and well established delay-and-sum (DAS) beamforming, as it promises improved image quality albeit higher computational effort. This work investigates an efficient implementation of FBI and evaluates the performance on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 system-on-chip (SoC) CPU and GPU using a synthetic radiofrequency (RF) ultrasound dataset. CPU profiling identified the real-to-complex (r2c) Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) as a primary bottleneck, with optimizations reducing runtime from 2993 ms to 892 ms per frame. GPU acceleration via the clFFT library and a custom OpenCL kernel for k-space processing, enhanced through kernel fusion, constant memory usage, and instruction-level tuning, further reduced runtime to 388 ms, a 2.86x speed-up over the optimized CPU version. Although 30 fps real-time performance was not reached under these imaging parameters (2.58 fps), reducing the number of transmitters increased throughput to approximately 6 fps at the expense of image fidelity. These results demonstrate the mobile GPU’s potential for FBI and suggest that real-time execution on next-generation SoCs is within reach.","PeriodicalId":73301,"journal":{"name":"IEEE open journal of ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control","volume":"5 ","pages":"176-180"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-09-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=11176040","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145352121","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-09-12DOI: 10.1109/OJUFFC.2025.3609675
Shureed Qazi;Keerthi S. Anand;Jonathon W. Homeister;Mark A. Farber;Caterina M. Gallippi
Carotid atherosclerosis is a major cause of ischemic stroke, and the ability to non-invasively assess plaque composition and structure is critical to effective stroke risk assessment. Carotid plaque components are delineated noninvasively by Acoustic Radiation Force Impulse (ARFI)-derived Variance of Acceleration, evaluated as its decadic log (log(VoA)). To date, this log(VoA) parameter has been calculated by isolating the variance in ARFI-induced displacement profiles using the second-order time derivative (SOTD), a high-pass filtering operation. The purpose of this study was to compare the performance of the SOTD filter to various other filtering methods in application to delineating human carotid plaque components, in vivo. Specifically, the SOTD filter was compared to Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Finite Impulse Response (FIR), Infinite Impulse Response (IIR), and mean-center spatial (MCS) filters. Filter performances were evaluated in terms of the resulting log(VoA) generalized contrast-to-noise ratio (gCNR) for distinguishing plaque features in human carotid plaques, in vivo, which were validated by spatially aligned histology. Results indicated that the SOTD filter consistently provided the highest gCNR for most plaque components, whereas the performances yielded by the other filters were more variable. The study demonstrated that the SOTD filter remains the preferred method for log(VoA) calculation due to its effectiveness for delineating carotid plaque features.
{"title":"Comparison of Filtering Methods for Calculating ARFI log(VoA) to Delineate Carotid Plaque Features, In Vivo","authors":"Shureed Qazi;Keerthi S. Anand;Jonathon W. Homeister;Mark A. Farber;Caterina M. Gallippi","doi":"10.1109/OJUFFC.2025.3609675","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/OJUFFC.2025.3609675","url":null,"abstract":"Carotid atherosclerosis is a major cause of ischemic stroke, and the ability to non-invasively assess plaque composition and structure is critical to effective stroke risk assessment. Carotid plaque components are delineated noninvasively by Acoustic Radiation Force Impulse (ARFI)-derived Variance of Acceleration, evaluated as its decadic log (log(VoA)). To date, this log(VoA) parameter has been calculated by isolating the variance in ARFI-induced displacement profiles using the second-order time derivative (SOTD), a high-pass filtering operation. The purpose of this study was to compare the performance of the SOTD filter to various other filtering methods in application to delineating human carotid plaque components, in vivo. Specifically, the SOTD filter was compared to Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Finite Impulse Response (FIR), Infinite Impulse Response (IIR), and mean-center spatial (MCS) filters. Filter performances were evaluated in terms of the resulting log(VoA) generalized contrast-to-noise ratio (gCNR) for distinguishing plaque features in human carotid plaques, in vivo, which were validated by spatially aligned histology. Results indicated that the SOTD filter consistently provided the highest gCNR for most plaque components, whereas the performances yielded by the other filters were more variable. The study demonstrated that the SOTD filter remains the preferred method for log(VoA) calculation due to its effectiveness for delineating carotid plaque features.","PeriodicalId":73301,"journal":{"name":"IEEE open journal of ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control","volume":"5 ","pages":"181-189"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=11162608","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145352189","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-09-02DOI: 10.1109/OJUFFC.2025.3604391
Mingyang Wang;Jeffrey S. Orringer;Yannis M. Paulus;Xinmai Yang;Xueding Wang
Traditionally, pulsed dye laser (PDL) therapy has been used to treat cutaneous blood vessels in patients with port-wine stain (PWS) birthmarks. PDL therapy, however, has limited treatment depth, and frequently results in suboptimal therapeutic outcomes when used to treat deep cutaneous blood vessels. We have developed photo-mediated ultrasound therapy (PUT), a hybrid cavitation-based anti-vascular technology combining nanosecond light pulses with ultrasound bursts and demonstrated its great potential in treating deep cutaneous vessels. This study explored the feasibility of PUT as an alternative to traditional PDL therapy for deep cutaneous vascular treatment in a clinically relevant chicken wattle model. PUT was employed to induce cavitation in blood vessels by using different light fluence and ultrasound pressure combinations. Theoretical modeling and in vitro experiments were first conducted to validate and optimize parameters for PUT treatment targeting deep vasculature. PUT treatments were then performed in a chicken wattle model using an experimental setup, and outcomes were assessed by using polarized dermoscope, optical coherence tomography angiography (OCT-A) imaging, and histopathological analyses. The results demonstrated that PUT can effectively penetrate the entire thickness of chicken wattle tissue, which is about 3 mm, and significantly reduce blood vessel density by 45.20% with a light fluence 10–100 times less than the fluence used in traditional PDL therapy. OCT-A imaging showed that local blood perfusion was significantly reduced, and the reduced blood perfusion persisted for at least 7 days post-treatment in the treated areas. Histopathological analyses based on H&E, CD31, and Russell-Movat Pentachrome (RMP) stains confirmed effective and selective vascular damage through the entire thickness of chicken wattle without causing collateral thermal damage. In conclusion, PUT can effectively eliminate blood vessels with a treatment depth up to 3 mm whereas the 3 mm treatment depth demonstrated in this study was only limited by the chicken wattle model. By leveraging the deep tissue penetration of ultrasound and the flexibility in treatment parameter selection, PUT can effectively treat deep cutaneous vasculature using reduced light fluence and thereby minimize collateral damage in skin tissues. Thus, PUT holds great potential for treatment of cutaneous vascular anomalies such as PWS.
{"title":"Photo-Mediated Ultrasound Therapy (PUT) for the Treatment of Deep Cutaneous Vasculature","authors":"Mingyang Wang;Jeffrey S. Orringer;Yannis M. Paulus;Xinmai Yang;Xueding Wang","doi":"10.1109/OJUFFC.2025.3604391","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/OJUFFC.2025.3604391","url":null,"abstract":"Traditionally, pulsed dye laser (PDL) therapy has been used to treat cutaneous blood vessels in patients with port-wine stain (PWS) birthmarks. PDL therapy, however, has limited treatment depth, and frequently results in suboptimal therapeutic outcomes when used to treat deep cutaneous blood vessels. We have developed photo-mediated ultrasound therapy (PUT), a hybrid cavitation-based anti-vascular technology combining nanosecond light pulses with ultrasound bursts and demonstrated its great potential in treating deep cutaneous vessels. This study explored the feasibility of PUT as an alternative to traditional PDL therapy for deep cutaneous vascular treatment in a clinically relevant chicken wattle model. PUT was employed to induce cavitation in blood vessels by using different light fluence and ultrasound pressure combinations. Theoretical modeling and in vitro experiments were first conducted to validate and optimize parameters for PUT treatment targeting deep vasculature. PUT treatments were then performed in a chicken wattle model using an experimental setup, and outcomes were assessed by using polarized dermoscope, optical coherence tomography angiography (OCT-A) imaging, and histopathological analyses. The results demonstrated that PUT can effectively penetrate the entire thickness of chicken wattle tissue, which is about 3 mm, and significantly reduce blood vessel density by 45.20% with a light fluence 10–100 times less than the fluence used in traditional PDL therapy. OCT-A imaging showed that local blood perfusion was significantly reduced, and the reduced blood perfusion persisted for at least 7 days post-treatment in the treated areas. Histopathological analyses based on H&E, CD31, and Russell-Movat Pentachrome (RMP) stains confirmed effective and selective vascular damage through the entire thickness of chicken wattle without causing collateral thermal damage. In conclusion, PUT can effectively eliminate blood vessels with a treatment depth up to 3 mm whereas the 3 mm treatment depth demonstrated in this study was only limited by the chicken wattle model. By leveraging the deep tissue penetration of ultrasound and the flexibility in treatment parameter selection, PUT can effectively treat deep cutaneous vasculature using reduced light fluence and thereby minimize collateral damage in skin tissues. Thus, PUT holds great potential for treatment of cutaneous vascular anomalies such as PWS.","PeriodicalId":73301,"journal":{"name":"IEEE open journal of ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control","volume":"5 ","pages":"135-145"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=11145956","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145036877","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-08-29DOI: 10.1109/OJUFFC.2025.3603792
Yu Weng;Luke Coulter;Muhammad Saad Khan;Eno Hysi;Agata A. Exner;Michael C. Kolios
In nonlinear contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) imaging, nanobubbles (NBs) offer a promising alternative for enhanced visualization of microvascular structures and molecular imaging. This study explores two amplitude-modulated (AM) techniques—cross amplitude modulation (xAM) and compound amplitude modulation (cAM)—to enhance the capabilities of NB-mediated CEUS imaging. Both methods were tested on the Vevo F2 ultrasound imaging system (Fujifilm VisualSonics Inc.) using the Vevo Advanced Data Acquisition (VADA) mode, allowing full customization of pulse sequences. The xAM technique utilized a three-event pulse sequence that transmits cross-propagating plane-wave beams from dual apertures. This method isolated nonlinear scattered waves from NBs, reducing background noise and enhancing image quality. In contrast, cAM achieved a high frame rate of 706 Hz, a valuable feature for tracking the NB vascular flow dynamics. cAM combined plane-wave compounding with amplitude modulation, transmitting two events (half- and full-amplitude), achieving high frame rates for velocity imaging at the expense of image quality. NBs at a concentration of $10^{9}$ NBs/mL, intended to mimic estimated in vivo post-injection concentrations, were injected into custom-built tissue-mimicking vessel phantoms. Experiments demonstrated that xAM significantly improved the contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) and contrast-to-tissue ratio (CTR) by over 10 times compared to B-mode imaging, especially at larger steering angles. Conversely, cAM’s CNR and CTR were at least 50% lower than that of xAM, but it achieved a frame rate over 100 times faster than xAM. These results suggest xAM can enhance imaging clarity, while cAM offers high frame rates for velocity imaging, providing an imaging framework for preclinical and clinical applications.
{"title":"Cross Amplitude Modulation and Compound Amplitude Modulation for Nonlinear Contrast-Enhanced Ultrasound Imaging of Nanobubbles","authors":"Yu Weng;Luke Coulter;Muhammad Saad Khan;Eno Hysi;Agata A. Exner;Michael C. Kolios","doi":"10.1109/OJUFFC.2025.3603792","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/OJUFFC.2025.3603792","url":null,"abstract":"In nonlinear contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) imaging, nanobubbles (NBs) offer a promising alternative for enhanced visualization of microvascular structures and molecular imaging. This study explores two amplitude-modulated (AM) techniques—cross amplitude modulation (xAM) and compound amplitude modulation (cAM)—to enhance the capabilities of NB-mediated CEUS imaging. Both methods were tested on the Vevo F2 ultrasound imaging system (Fujifilm VisualSonics Inc.) using the Vevo Advanced Data Acquisition (VADA) mode, allowing full customization of pulse sequences. The xAM technique utilized a three-event pulse sequence that transmits cross-propagating plane-wave beams from dual apertures. This method isolated nonlinear scattered waves from NBs, reducing background noise and enhancing image quality. In contrast, cAM achieved a high frame rate of 706 Hz, a valuable feature for tracking the NB vascular flow dynamics. cAM combined plane-wave compounding with amplitude modulation, transmitting two events (half- and full-amplitude), achieving high frame rates for velocity imaging at the expense of image quality. NBs at a concentration of <inline-formula> <tex-math>$10^{9}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> NBs/mL, intended to mimic estimated in vivo post-injection concentrations, were injected into custom-built tissue-mimicking vessel phantoms. Experiments demonstrated that xAM significantly improved the contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) and contrast-to-tissue ratio (CTR) by over 10 times compared to B-mode imaging, especially at larger steering angles. Conversely, cAM’s CNR and CTR were at least 50% lower than that of xAM, but it achieved a frame rate over 100 times faster than xAM. These results suggest xAM can enhance imaging clarity, while cAM offers high frame rates for velocity imaging, providing an imaging framework for preclinical and clinical applications.","PeriodicalId":73301,"journal":{"name":"IEEE open journal of ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control","volume":"5 ","pages":"146-160"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=11143226","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145073325","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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