R. Tymkiewicz

Skin imaging with high frequency ultrasound - preliminary results.

This study presents the detailed construction and the principle of performance of high frequency (HF) ultrasound scanner for skin examination. The aim of this study was to show a difference between diseased and healthy skin and to evaluate the usefulness of the scanner in monitoring of therapeutic efficacy of morphea and lichen sclerosus et atrophicus (LSA). We examined 48 patients aged between 15 and 64 years; 25 patients with plaque-type morphea, nine patients with linear morphea and 14 patients with LSA. In the course of 18 months all patients were examined before, during and after treatment. In 29 patients ultrasonographic evidence of regression (decreasing of the skin thickness) was observed, in eight patients ultrasound examination showed progression and in 12 patients no difference in the ultrasound scan before and after treatment could be shown. Our study shows that HF ultrasound scanner is suitable to differentiate between the healthy and diseased skin in morphea and LSA as well as to evaluate the treatment efficacy of these diseases.

Nonlinear and linear propagation of diagnostic ultrasound pulses

The effect of nonlinear propagation in fluid followed by soft tissue was studied both theoretically and experimentally for a most crucial case in obstetrical ultrasonography. For this purpose, short pressure pulses, with the duration time of 1.3 micros and a carrier frequency of 3 MHz, radiated by a concave transducer into water, with maximum intensities up to the value of 18 W/cm2, were computed and measured. The ultrasonic beam had the physical focus at the distance of 6.5 cm, where the highest focal intensity of I(SPPA) = 242 W/cm2 was obtained. In front of the transducer, at a distance of 7 cm, artificial tissue samples prepared on the basis of ground porcine kidney, with a thickness of 0.5, 1.5 and 3 cm, were placed in water. Pressure pulses and their spectral components were produced numerically and measured by means of a PVDF hydrophone in water before and after penetrating the tissue samples. The theoretical analysis and measurements were carried out, in every case, for two signal levels: for a high level assuring nonlinear propagation and for a low one where conditions of linear propagation were fulfilled. In this way, it was possible to compare directly the effects of nonlinear and linear propagation, in every case showing a good conformity of theoretical values with measured ones. A method of determination of the effective frequency response of the hydrophone was elaborated to enable quantitative comparisons of numerical and experimental results. The theoretical part of our study was based on a paper of Wójcik (1998), enabling us to compute the characteristic function of nonlinear increase of absorption. An agreement of up to 10% was obtained when comparing theoretical and measured values of these functions in the investigated beam in water and behind tissue samples. The results obtained showed that the recently given theory of nonlinear absorption, based on the spectral analysis and the elaborated numerical procedures, may be useful in various practical ultrasonic medical problems and also in technological applications.

Ultrasonic scanner for in vivo measurement of cancellous bone properties from backscattered data

A dedicated ultrasonic scanner for acquiring RF echoes backscattered from the trabecular bone was developed. The design of device is based on the goal of minimizing of custom electronics and computations executed solely on the main computer processor and the graphics card. The electronic encoder-digitizer module executing all of the transmission and reception functions is based on a single low-cost field programmable gate array (FPGA). The scanner is equipped with a mechanical sector-scan probe with a concave transducer with 50 mm focal length, center frequency of 1.5 MHz and 60% bandwidth at -6 dB. The example of femoral neck bone examination shows that the scanner can provide ultrasonic data from deeply located bones with the ultrasound penetrating the trabecular bone up to a depth of 20 mm. It is also shown that the RF echo data acquired with the scanner allow for the estimation of attenuation coefficient and frequency dependence of backscattering coefficient of trabecular bone. The values of the calculated parameters are in the range of corresponding in vitro data from the literature but their variation is relatively high.

High frequency imaging using coded golay transmission

The issue of maximizing penetration depth with concurrent retaining or enhancement of image resolution constitutes one of the time invariant challenges in ultrasound imaging. Concerns about potential and undesirable side effects set limits on the possibility of overcoming the frequency dependent attenuation effects by increasing peak acoustic amplitudes of the waves

NONLINEAR NATIVE PROPAGATION EFFECTS OF DIAGNOSTIC ULTRASOUND COMPUTED AND MEASURED IN BLOOD

Nonlinear propagation effects produced by focused pulses in blood were measured over a 20-cm range, being inspired by diagnostic applications in cardiology. The initial and maximum pressures applied during measurements in blood were equal to 0.40 MPa(pp) and 0.76 MPa(pp), while the pressure estimated at the patient body surface equalled 0.70 MPa(pp). Measurements of the frequency characteristic and the linearity of the ultrasonic probe used in experiments were performed in water. A numerical procedure developed previously was applied in blood to calculate the pressure distribution of its first and second harmonics along the beam axis. The comparison of numerical and measured distributions in blood at a temperature of 37 degrees C showed rather good agreement. Using numerical methods, a proportional growth of the second harmonic with the increased applied initial pressure was first observed, and finally the maximum limiting effect was found. In this way, much higher level of harmonics could be obtained. However, there arise the questions of the transmitting system construction and of the nonuniform resolution in the case of harmonic imaging when increasing the applied initial pressure.

Amplitude, isobar and grey-scale imaging of ultrasonic shadows behind rigid, elastic and gaseous spheres

The theory of wave reflection from spherical obstacles was applied for determination of the cause of the shadow created by plane wave pulses incident on rigid, steel, gaseous spheres and on spheres made of kidney stones. The spheres were immersed in water which was assumed to be a tissue-like medium. Acoustic pressure distributions behind the spheres with the radii of 1 mm, 2.5 mm and 3.5 mm were determined at the frequency of 5 MHz. The use of the exact wave theory enabled us to take into account the diffraction effects. The computed pressure distributions were verified experimentally at the frequency of 5 MHz for a steel sphere with a 2.5-mm radius. The experimental and theoretical pulses were composed of about three ultrasonic frequency periods. Acoustic pressure distributions in the shadow zone of all spheres were shown in the amplitude axonometric projection, in the grey scale and also as acoustic isobar patterns. Our analysis confirmed existing simpler descriptions of the shadow from the point of view of reflection and refraction effects; however, our approach is more general, also including diffraction effects and assuming the pulse mode. The analysis has shown that gaseous spherical inclusions caused shadows with very high dynamics of acoustic pressures that were about 15 dB higher in relation to all the other spheres. The shadow length, determined as the length at which one observes a 6-dB drop of the acoustic pressure, followed the relation r-6dB = 3.7a2/lambda with the accuracy of about 20% independent of the sphere type. lambda denotes the wavelength and a the sphere radius. Thus, a theoretical possibility of differentiating between gaseous and other inclusions and of estimation of the inclusion size in the millimeter range from the shadow was shown. The influence of the frequency-dependent attenuation on the shadow will be considered in the next study.

Thick film transducers for high frequency coded ultrasonography

Recently a new technology of piezoelectric transducers based on PZT thick film has been developed as a response to a call for devices working at higher frequencies suitable for production in large numbers at low cost. Eight PZT thick film based focused transducers with resonant frequency close to 40 MHz were fabricated and experimentally investigated. The PZT thick films were deposited on acoustically engineered ceramic substrates by pad printing. Considering high frequency and nonlinear propagation it has been decided to evaluate the axial pressure field emitted (and reflected by thick metal plate) by each of concave transducer differing in radius of curvature - 11 mm, 12 mm, 15 mm, 16 mm. All transducers were activated using AVTEC AVG-3A-PS transmitter and Ritec diplexer connected directly to Agilent 54641D oscilloscope. As anticipated, in all cases the focal distance was up to 10% closer to the transducer face than the one related to the curvature radius. Axial pressure distributions were also compared to the calculated ones (with the experimentally determined boundary conditions) using the angular spectrum method including nonlinear propagation in water. The computed results are in a very good agreement with the experimental ones. The transducers were excited with Golay coded sequences at 35–40 MHz. Introducing the coded excitation allowed replacing the short-burst transmission at 20 MHz with the same peak amplitude pressure, but with almost double center frequency, resulting in considerably better axial resolution. The thick films exhibited at least 30% bandwidth broadening comparing to the standard PZ 27 transducer, resulting in an increase in matching filtering output by a factor of 1.4–1.5 and finally resulting in a SNR gain of the same order. Examples of skin scans obtained with the new thick-film transducers are presented.

Bone scanner for examination of deeply located trabecular bones

The ultrasonic scanner dedicated for acquiring the RF echoes, backscattered from the trabecular bone, was developed. The device is based on the concept of minimizing of electronics and computations executed solely in the main computer processor and the graphics card. The electronic module of encoder-digitizer - executing all the transmission and reception functions - is based on a single low-cost FPGA chip. The scanner is equipped with the mechanical sector scan probe with a concave transducer with 50 mm focal length, center frequency of 1.5 MHz and 60 % bandwidth at - 6 dB. The example of femoral neck bone examination shows that the scanner can provide ultrasonic data from deeply located bones with the ultrasound penetrating the trabecular bone up to the depth of 20 mm. It was also presented that the RF echo-data acquired with the scanner allow for the estimation of sound attenuation in trabecular bone.

Computing and measuring nonlinear propagation effects by means of PVDF and electromagnetic hydrophones

Distortions of nonlinear pulses in water caused by measurements with PVDF and EM hydrophones are shown, corrected and compared with numerical results obtained by means of the WJ Code [7].