Rapid rotational magneto-acousto-electrical tomography with filtered back-projection algorithm based on plane waves.

Magneto-acousto-electrical tomography (MAET) is designed to produce conductivity images with high spatial resolution for a conducting object. In a previous study, for an irregular conductor, transverse scanning and rotational methods with a focus transducer were combined to collect complete electrical information. This kind of method, however, is time-consuming because of the transverse scanning procedure.

Optimization of multi-angle Magneto-Acousto-Electrical Tomography (MAET) based on a numerical method.

Magneto-Acousto-Electrical Tomography (MAET) is a novel multi-physics imaging method, which promises to offer a unique biophysical property of tissue electrical impedance with the additional benefit of excellent spatial resolution of the ultrasonic imaging. It opens the potential for early diagnosis of cancer by revealing changes of dielectric characteristics. However, direct MAET is unable to image the irregularly-shaped lesions fully due to the dependence on the angle between conductivity boundary and ultrasound beam direction.

Delivery of Liposomes with Different Sizes to Mice Brain after Sonication by Focused Ultrasound in the Presence of Microbubbles.

Imaging or therapeutic agents larger than the blood-brain barrier's (BBB) exclusion threshold of 400 Da could be delivered locally, non-invasively and reversibly by focused ultrasound (FUS) with circulating microbubbles. The size of agents is an important factor to the delivery outcome using this method. Liposomes are important drug carriers with controllable sizes in a range of nanometers.

Segmentation of cytoplasm and nuclei of abnormal cells in cervical cytology using global and local graph cuts.

Automation-assisted reading (AAR) techniques have the potential to reduce errors and increase productivity in cervical cancer screening. The sensitivity of AAR relies heavily on automated segmentation of abnormal cervical cells, which is handled poorly by current segmentation algorithms. In this paper, a global and local scheme based on graph cut approach is proposed to segment cervical cells in images with a mix of healthy and abnormal cells.

Cytoplasm segmentation on cervical cell images using graph cut-based approach.

This paper proposes a method to segment the cytoplasm in cervical cell images using graph cut-based algorithm. First, the A* channel in CIE LAB color space is extracted for contrast enhancement. Then, in order to effectively extract cytoplasm boundaries when image histograms present non-bimodal distribution, Otsu multiple thresholding is performed on the contrast enhanced image to generate initial segments, based on which the segments are refined by the multi-way graph cut method.

Intelligent scanning: automated standard plane selection and biometric measurement of early gestational sac in routine ultrasound examination.

Purpose: To assist radiologists and decrease interobserver variability when using 2D ultrasonography (US) to locate the standardized plane of early gestational sac (SPGS) and to perform gestational sac (GS) biometric measurements.

Methods: In this paper, the authors report the design of the first automatic solution, called "intelligent scanning" (IS), for selecting SPGS and performing biometric measurements using real-time 2D US. First, the GS is efficiently and precisely located in each ultrasound frame by exploiting a coarse to fine detection scheme based on the training of two cascade AdaBoost classifiers.

Ultrasound-triggered release of materials entrapped in microbubble-liposome constructs: a tool for targeted drug delivery.

We investigated the preparation of ultrasound-triggered drug delivery system, based on a pendant complex of microbubble coated with liposomes. Biotinylated decafluorobutane microbubbles were coated with biotinylated liposomes via a streptavidin linker. Liposomes were prepared incorporating calcein and thrombin.

Targeted ultrasound-mediated delivery of nanoparticles: on the development of a new HIFU-based therapy and imaging device.

Ultrasound-mediated delivery (USMD) is an active research topic, as researchers develop applications for therapeutic ultrasound in addition to thermal ablation. In USMD, ultrasound is used in conjunction with microbubbles and drugs, nanoparticles, siRNA, pDNA, stem cells, etc., to facilitate their cellular delivery and uptake using pressure and temperature-mediated mechanisms to bring about a desired therapeutic effect.

Focused ultrasound-induced stimulation of microbubbles augments site-targeted engraftment of mesenchymal stem cells after acute myocardial infarction.

Intravascular transplantation of bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) is a promising therapeutic approach after acute myocardial infarction. Efficacy and targeting of myocardial cell engraftment are crucial variables determining the therapeutic value of MSC transplantation. Highly focused ultrasound-mediated stimulation of microbubbles (hf-UMS) allows locoregional pre-treatment of target tissue.

"Compression-only" behavior of phospholipid-coated contrast bubbles.

Ultrasound contrast agents oscillate approximately linearly up to a certain pressure range where nonlinearity sets in. Nonlinear microbubble oscillations are exploited in ultrasound pulse-echo imaging as this improves the contrast-to-tissue ratio. Here we report the observation of a highly nonlinear response of phospholipid-coated contrast agents at pressures as low as 50 kPa, termed "compression-only" behavior, where the microbubbles only compress, yet hardly expand.

Microbubble spectroscopy of ultrasound contrast agents.

A new optical characterization of the behavior of single ultrasound contrast bubbles is presented. The method consists of insonifying individual bubbles several times successively sweeping the applied frequency, and to record movies of the bubble response up to 25 million frames/s with an ultrahigh speed camera operated in a segmented mode. The method, termed microbubble spectroscopy, enables to reconstruct a resonance curve in a single run.

Harmonic chirp imaging method for ultrasound contrast agent.

Coded excitation is currently used in medical ultrasound to increase signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and penetration depth. We propose a chirp excitation method for contrast agents using the second harmonic component of the response. This method is based on a compression filter that selectively compresses and extracts the second harmonic component from the received echo signal.

Optimising phase and amplitude modulation schemes for imaging microbubble contrast agents at low acoustic power.

A series of in vitro experiments were performed to determine the efficacy of generalised phase- and amplitude-modulated sequences for low-power nonlinear microbubble contrast imaging. The microbubble agent Definity (Dupont, Boston, MA) was exposed to sequences in which the phase and amplitude were changed from one pulse to the next. Echoes from these pulses were combined to suppress or enhance particular linear or nonlinear components.

Nonlinear coded excitation method for ultrasound contrast imaging.

Coded excitation with compression on receive is used in medical ultrasound (US) imaging to increase signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and penetration depth. We performed a computer simulation study to investigate if chirped pulse excitation can be applied in US contrast agent imaging to increase SNR and contrast-to-tissue ratio (CTR) and, thus, reduce contrast agent destruction and tissue harmonics. A new nonlinear compression technique is proposed that selectively compresses the second harmonic component of the response.