Institute of Fundamental Technological Research

Ultradźwiękowe systemy Phased-Array (PA) umożliwiają detekcję i ocenę wad za pomocą wieloelementowych głowic ze skanowaniem elektronicznym. Zaawansowane metody kierowania wiązki oraz wizualizacji znacznie ułatwiają badania obiektów o skomplikowanej geometrii. Należy jednak pamiętać, ze klasyczna metoda PA bazuje na tych samych zasadach fizycznych, co skanowanie standardowymi głowicami jednoelementowymi i posiada te same ograniczenia. W naszym laboratorium pracujemy nad implementacją nowej klasy metod obrazowania UT, które wykorzystują technikę Full-Matrix Capture (FMC) oraz Total Focusing Method (TFM). Metody te dają zupełnie nowe możliwości rekonstrukcji obrazów wad i pozwalają na uzyskanie jednorodnej rozdzielczości poprzecznej w całej głębokości badania. W tym celu zbudowaliśmy demonstrator przenośnego systemu PA wyposażony w funkcje FMC i TFM. Akwizycja pełnej macierzy ech oraz przetwarzanie softwarowe na wbudowanym procesorze GPU (Nvidia Tegra) zapewniają duże możliwości przetwarzania i analizy sygnałów. Demonstrator jest wyposażony w 32-kanały akwizycji w konfiguracji 32:128 i współpracuje ze standardowymi głowicami PA firmy Olympus.

UT, Phased-Array, akwizycja pełnej macierzy, GPU

Ultradźwiękowe systemy Phased-Array pozwalają na różne tryby skanowania i wizualizacji wad oraz zapewniają wyższą jakość inspekcji niż tradycyjne systemy jednokanałowe. Kolejnym krokiem w rozwoju tych systemów będzie metoda akwizycji pełnej macierzy oraz zaawansowane algorytmy rekonstrukcji obrazów. W artykule przedstawiono zasady działania tych technik oraz wymagania jakie stawiają one przed systemami akwizycji i przetwarzania sygnałów. Zaprezentowano także badawczy system Uniwersalnej Platformy Ultradźwiękowej, który został opracowany specjalnie do testowania i praktycznego wdrażania tych metod. Platforma posłużyła do badań i porównania dwóch metod rekonstrukcji przy wykorzystaniu akwizycji pełnej macierzy – metody STA (Synthetic Transmit Aperture) i metody PWI (Plane Wave Imaging).

UT Phased-Array, akwizycja pełnej macierzy, syntetyczna apertura

The medical management of patients with continuous-flow left ventricular assist devices (LVADs) requires frequent measurement and analysis of various physiological parameters. Among the most important is blood pressure (BP), which cannot be reliably measured by the standard oscillometric method because of an impaired pulsation due to continuous flow. The objective of this work is to show the feasibility of ultrasound-based BP measurement in a portable, easy to use device for patients with LVAD in home-based rehabilitation environments, enabling long-term remote monitoring. We have implemented a BP measurement system which uses continuous wave (CW) Doppler ultrasound for blood flow detection. The system is based on a standard cuff design with custom analog CW circuitry connected to a high-performance, low-power 32-bit microcontroller (ARM Cortex-M7). The uC is responsible for system control, as well as Doppler signal acquisition and processing. A dedicated ultrasound probe equipped with an elastic strap is placed over the radial artery. In the target solution, the cuff pressure and CW signal will be analyzed in real-time to provide systolic and/or mean blood pressure. At present, we have acquired raw signals for off-line analysis. The system was tested in clinical experiments both on healthy patients and patients with three types of commercially available LVADs (HeartWare, HeartMate II and HeartMate III). The observed morphology of Doppler signals in patients with LVADs was much more variable between patients and pumps. In most cases, we were able to estimate the systolic pressure, but the measurement of diastolic pressure was not conclusive. We observed variable blood flow patterns generated by the Lavare cycle (a periodic speed modulation feature of some LVADs), which further complicates the estimation. A prototype of an automatic BP measuring device for patients with rotary LVADs has been demonstrated. In the next step, we are planning an animal validation study with invasive blood pressure monitoring

Biomedical monitoring, Doppler effect, Blood pressure, Blood, Pressure measurement, Ultrasonic variables measurement, Standards

Ultrasound Phased-Array (PA) systems for nondestructive testing (NDT) use standard beamforming for line-byline image creation. New methods utilizing full-matrix capture (FMC) enable the application of advance processing algorithms, such as the total focusing method and multi-pass adaptive techniques for enhanced flaw visualization. The effective FMC data acquisition and its real-time processing require a very high data throughput and powerful computational resources. Most commercial PA systems support some form of FMC acquisition, but the limited external data bandwidth prevents this mode of operation from being useful. We have developed a fully programmable ultrasound research system capable of performing FMC data acquisition and image reconstruction with a high framerate. The ultrasound platform is supporting up to 192 parallel TX/RX electronics channels integrated with an embedded control PC and a GPU cluster for parallel processing. The implemented software libraries give the end-user control over TX/RX schemes, the acquisition process and signal processing algorithms. This all-in-one system is a fully flexible tool for the research and evaluation of novel Phased-Array FMC imaging methods and complex signal processing algorithms.

GPU, ultrasound, Phased-Array

This paper is a part of the IUS 2016 Planewave Imaging Challenge submission. Spatial compounding of several low-resolution images taken from different angles is a well-established practice in ultrasound imaging. The usual procedure relies on averaging several images using arithmetic mean. An alternative approach is presented, which relies on multiplication of the low-resolution images.

ultrasound, plane wave imaging

In spite of the progress in material engineering and ventricular assist devices construction, thromboembolism remains the most crucial problem in mechanical heart supporting systems. Therefore, the ability to monitor the patient’s blood for clot formation should be considered an important factor in development of heart supporting systems. The well-known methods for automatic embolus detection are based on the monitoring of the ultrasound Doppler signal. A working system utilizing ultrasound Doppler is being developed for the purpose of flow estimation and emboli detection in the clinical artificial heart ReligaHeart EXT. The system will be based on the existing dual channel multi-gate Doppler device with RF digital processing. A specially developed clamp-on cannula probe, equipped with 2 − 4MHz piezoceramic transducers, enables easy system setup. We present the issues related to the development of automatic emboli detection via Doppler measurements. We consider several algorithms for the flow estimation and emboli detection. We discuss their efficiency and confront them with the requirements of our experimental setup. Theoretical considerations are then met with preliminary experimental findings from a) flow studies with blood mimicking fluid and b) in-vitro flow studies with animal blood. Finally, we discuss some more methodological issues - we consider several possible approaches to the problem of verification of the accuracy of the detection system.

microemboli, embolism, Doppler ultrasound, ventricular assist device