I want some help for my technical seminar presentation on ultrafast imaging in biomedical ultrasound.About its advantages, disadvantages and limitations.
Although the use of flat-wave ultrasonic transmissions instead of line-per-line focused beam transmissions has been studied for a long time in research, the clinical application of this technology was only recently possible through developments in GPU-based platforms. Far beyond technological advancement, the use of flat or divergent wave transmissions allows the achievement of ultrafast frame rates (usually faster than 1000 frames per second) over a large field of view. This concept has also inspired the emergence of new imaging modes that are valuable for ultrasound-based screening, diagnosis and therapeutic follow-up.
In the last fifteen years, the introduction of flat or divergent wave transmissions rather than ray-centered beam beams has broken conventional ultrasonic image barriers. Using such field-of-view transmissions, the frame rate reaches the theoretical limit of the physics dictated by the speed of the ultrasound and an ultrasonic map can typically be provided in tens of microseconds (several thousand frames per second). Interestingly, this jump in frame rate is not only a technological breakthrough, it allows the advent of new ultrasound imaging modes, including elastography of cut-off waves, electromechanical wave images, ultrafast Doppler, ultrafast contrast images and even Functional ultrasound imaging of brain activity. fUltrasound) by introducing ultrasound as a full-fledged emerging neuroimaging modality.
At ultrafast frame rates, it is possible to track in real time the transient vibrations - known as cutting waves - that propagate through the organs. Such "human body seismology" provides quantitative maps of local tissue stiffness whose added value for diagnosis has recently been demonstrated in many fields of radiology (breast, prostate and liver cancer, cardiovascular imaging, ...). Today, Supersonic Imagine Company is commercializing the first clinical ultrasound ultrasound, Aixplorer with real time Shear Wave Elastography. This is the first example of an ultrafast ultrasound surpassing the research phase and now widely disseminated in the clinical ultrasound medical community with an installed base of more than 1000 Aixplorer systems in 54 countries worldwide.
For blood flow imaging, ultrafast Doppler allows high-precision characterization of complex vascular and cardiac flows. It also gives ultrasound the ability to detect very subtle blood flows in very small vessels. In the brain, this ultrasensitive Doppler prepares the way for ultrasound (functional ultrasound) of the brain activity with an unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution in comparison to the MRF. Combined with contrast agents, our group demonstrated that Ultrafast Ultrasound Localization could provide a first mode of imaging in vivo and non-invasively on a microscopic scale deep within the organs. Many of these ultrafast modes should lead to significant improvements in ultrasound scanning, diagnosis and therapeutic monitoring.