Submit to Applied Sciences Review for Applied Sciences Propose a Special Issue

Journal Browser

Computational Ultrasound Imaging and Applications

Print Special Issue Flyer
Special Issue Editors
Special Issue Information
Keywords
Related Special Issue
Published Papers

A special issue of Applied Sciences (ISSN 2076-3417). This special issue belongs to the section "Acoustics and Vibrations".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (28 February 2023) | Viewed by 20753

Share This Special Issue

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Richard Nauber

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

1. Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Technical University of Dresden, 01069 Dresden, Germany 2. Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research, 01069 Dresden, Germany
Interests: ultrasound imaging; photoacoustics; signal processing; aberration correction; beamforming; machine learning
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Dr. Lars Buettner

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Technical University of Dresden, 01069 Dresden, Germany
Interests: ultrasound imaging; photoacoustics; signal processing; aberration correction; beamforming; laser- and ultrasound-based measurement techniques; adaptive wavefront shaping and aberration correcting systems; advanced measurement systems in biology
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Prof. Dr. Jürgen W. Czarske

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

1. Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering, TU Dresden, 01069 Dresden, Germany
2. Institute of Applied Physics, Faculty of Natural Sciences, TU Dresden, 01062 Dresden, Germany
Interests: ultrasound imaging; photoacoustics; signal processing; aberration correction; beamforming; laser- and ultrasound-based measurement techniques; adaptive wavefront shaping and aberration correcting systems; advanced measurement systems in biology
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The availability of enormous computational resources has spurred the recent transition from fixed-purpose devices to software-defined ultrasound platforms. This paradigm shift enables new signal processing approaches that can vastly improve the performance of an ultrasound imaging system: transitioning the image formation from conventional scanning to computational beamforming allows recording at very high framerates. Localization and tracking of nonlinear scatterers can improve the spatial resolution below the diffraction limit. Adaptive imaging and aberration correction allows one to image through scattering media. Machine learning-based approaches can solve inverse problems in real time and make novel measurement modalities accessible. These advancements have the potential to open up a broad variety of new applications: medical imaging and diagnostics, such as functional ultrasound, experimental research of complex, turbulent flows and in situ imaging of industrial processes in harsh environments.

This Special Issue addresses the recent trend towards computational ultrasound imaging. It welcomes contributions (original research articles or reviews) from a broad spectrum of fields, which focus on methods, implementation and applications of computational ultrasound imaging.

Dr. Richard Nauber
Dr. Lars Buettner
Prof. Dr. Jürgen W. Czarske
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Applied Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

Methods:

super resolution
machine learning
beamforming
photoacoustics
elastography
tomography and solution to the inverse problem
compressed sensing, coded excitation
3D imaging/volumetric reconstruction

Applications:

medical imaging and diagnostics
experimental research in liquids or gases, rheology
monitoring of technical, industrial and biotechnical processes, hydrology
nondestructive evaluation or testing (NDE/NDT)

Related Special Issue

Computational Ultrasound Imaging and Applications, 2nd Edition in Applied Sciences (1 article)

Published Papers (10 papers)

Download All Papers

Editorial

Jump to: Research

3 pages, 153 KiB

Open AccessEditorial

Special Issue on Computational Ultrasound Imaging and Applications

by Richard Nauber, Lars Büttner and Jürgen Czarske

Appl. Sci. 2024, 14(3), 964; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app14030964 - 23 Jan 2024

Viewed by 552

Abstract

Scientific and technical progress is driven particularly by the ability to “look” into new areas [...] Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Computational Ultrasound Imaging and Applications)

Research

Jump to: Editorial

11 pages, 778 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Role of Shear-Wave Elastography of the Spleen in Ruling out the Presence of High-Risk Varices in Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD)

by Vasile-Andrei Olteanu, Catalin-Victor Sfarti, Gheorghe G. Balan, Oana Timofte, Elena Gologan, Dana Elena Mitrică, Georgiana-Emmanuela Gilca-Blanariu, Cristina Gena Dascalu, Ion Sandu and Gabriela Ştefănescu

Appl. Sci. 2023, 13(9), 5764; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app13095764 - 07 May 2023

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1506

Abstract

The progression of liver fibrosis and the presence of portal hypertension are two key points in the follow-up and severity assessment of patients with chronic liver disease. Objective evaluation of such aspects has proven to be difficult due to the lack of reproducible and standardized non-invasive methods. Therefore, the aim of this study was to evaluate whether spleen stiffness (SS) can rule out the presence of high-risk varices (HRVs) in patients with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). We designed a prospective follow-up of a cohort of 48 consecutive patients diagnosed with compensated advanced chronic liver disease (cACLD) due to NAFLD, between January 2020 and January 2021. After clinical evaluation, laboratory testing, ultrasonography (US), and shear-wave elastography (2D-SWE.GE) of both the liver and the spleen, patients were endoscopically screened for esophageal varices, gastric varices, and portal hypertensive gastropathy. Correlations and predictors were assessed. After univariate, multivariate, and predictive analyses, SS could be referred to as an independent predictor for high-risk varices (AUROC 0.987, p < 0.001, OR 4.985, 95% CI: 1.57–15.73, p = 0.006), with a calculated cutoff value of 17.95 kPa. These results are consistent with those of other, similar studies using both 2D-SWE.GE and a similar module (2D-SWE.SSI) in patients with metabolic liver disease. When confirmed by subsequent larger studies, SS could potentially become a useful non-invasive tool in the assessment of clinically significant portal hypertension in patients with advanced fatty liver disease. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Computational Ultrasound Imaging and Applications)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

16 pages, 3728 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Ultrasound Signal Processing Based on High-Performance CORDIC Algorithm and Radial Artery Imaging Implementation

by Chaohong Zhang, Xingguang Geng, Fei Yao, Liyuan Liu, Ziyang Guo, Yitao Zhang and Yunfeng Wang

Appl. Sci. 2023, 13(9), 5664; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app13095664 - 04 May 2023

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1608

Abstract

The radial artery reflects the largest amount of physiological and pathological information about the human body. However, ultrasound signal processing involves a large number of complex functions, and traditional digital signal processing can hardly meet the requirements of real-time processing of ultrasound data. The research aims to improve computational accuracy and reduce the hardware complexity of ultrasound signal processing systems. Firstly, this paper proposes to apply the coordinate rotation digital computer (CORDIC) algorithm to the whole radial artery ultrasound signal processing, combines the signal processing characteristics of each sub-module, and designs the dynamic filtering module based on the radix-4 CORDIC algorithm, the quadrature demodulation module based on the partitioned-hybrid CORDIC algorithm, and the dynamic range transformation module based on the improved scale-free CORDIC algorithm. A digital radial artery ultrasound imaging system was then built to verify the accuracy of the three sub-modules. The simulation results show that the use of the high-performance CORDIC algorithm can improve the accuracy of data processing. This provides a new idea for the real-time processing of ultrasound signals. Finally, radial artery ultrasound data were collected from 20 volunteers using different probe scanning modes at three reference positions. The vessel diameter measurements were averaged to verify the reliability of the CORDIC algorithm for radial artery ultrasound imaging, which has practical application value for computer-aided clinical diagnosis. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Computational Ultrasound Imaging and Applications)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

15 pages, 4265 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Comparison of Phase-Screen and Geometry-Based Phase Aberration Correction Techniques for Real-Time Transcranial Ultrasound Imaging

by Moein Mozaffarzadeh, Martin D. Verweij, Nico de Jong and Guillaume Renaud

Appl. Sci. 2022, 12(19), 10183; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app121910183 - 10 Oct 2022

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1708

Abstract

While transcranial ultrasound imaging is a promising diagnostic modality, it is still hindered due to phase aberration and multiple scattering caused by the skull. In this paper, we compare near-field phase-screen modeling (PS) to a geometry-based phase aberration correction technique (GB) when an ultrafast imaging sequence (five plane waves tilted from −15 to +15 degrees in the cutaneous tissue layer) is used for data acquisition. With simulation data, the aberration profile (AP) of two aberrator models (flat and realistic temporal bone) was estimated in five isoplanatic patches, while the wave-speed of the brain tissue surrounding the point targets was either modeled homogeneously (ideal) or slightly heterogeneously to generate speckle (for mimicking a more realistic brain tissue). For the experiment, a phased array P4-1 transducer was used to image a wire phantom; a 4.2-mm-thick bone-mimicking plate was placed in front of the probe. The AP of the plate was estimated in three isoplanatic patches. The numerical results indicate that, while all the scatterers are detectable in the image reconstructed by the GB method, many scatterers are not detected with the PS method when the dataset used for AP estimation is generated with a realistic bone model and heterogeneous brain tissue. The experimental results show that the GB method increases the signal-to-clutter ratio (SCR) by 7.5 dB and 6.5 dB compared to the PS and conventional reconstruction methods, respectively. The GB method reduces the axial/lateral localization error by 1.97/0.66 mm and 2.08/0.7 mm compared to the PS method and conventional reconstruction, respectively. The lateral spatial resolution (full-width-half-maximum) is also improved by 0.1 mm and 1.06 mm compared to the PS method and conventional reconstruction, respectively. Our comparison study suggests that GB aberration correction outperforms the PS method when an ultrafast multi-angle plane wave sequence is used for transcranial imaging with a single transducer. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Computational Ultrasound Imaging and Applications)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

12 pages, 3373 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Application of Image Texture Analysis Techniques on the Effects of Dry Needling versus Placebo in Low-Back Pain Patients: A Pilot-Study

by Alba Del-Canto-Fernández, Pablo Calleja-Martínez, Borja Descalzo-Hoyas, Sebastián Rodríguez-Posada, Nicolás Cuenca-Zaldívar, Samuel Fernández-Carnero, Fermin Naranjo-Cinto and Tomas Gallego-Izquierdo

Appl. Sci. 2022, 12(11), 5556; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app12115556 - 30 May 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2549

Abstract

Low back pain is the leading cause of disability in the world, with a significant socio-economic impact. Deep dry needling is effective in the treatment of this pain, and it is one of the techniques preferred by physiotherapists. In this field, the use of ultrasound provides information of interest such as length, thickness, diameter, cross-sectional area, or muscle volume, among others. Objective: To find out whether the tissue changes (thickness, histogram, and contraction rate) that occur in the lumbar multifidus after application of the deep dry needle are related to changes in the pain and the disability of the patient. Design: Randomized, double-blind, parallel-group clinical trial. Setting: University of Alcalá, Department of Physiotherapy. Subjects: 21 voluntary patients (women and men) with non-specific low-back pain aged 18–65 years. Intervention: Patients were randomly divided into two groups. One group received dry needling and the other group a dry needling placebo. Initial post-needling and one week post-needling assessments were performed by a therapist blinded to the intervention. Variables: Lumbar multifidus thickness measured by RUSI, contraction time measured by M-mode, histograms measured by image analysis, muscle area, pain measured by VAS, pressure pain threshold measured by pressure algometer, and disability measured by Roland–Morris questionnaire. Conclusions: The contraction speed, resting thickness, and pain demonstrated significant differences within each group, but not between groups. There were significant differences in contraction ratio and in PPT between groups. There was excellent intra-examiner reliability in image collection for histogram analysis. Histogram analysis showed no significant differences between groups and measurements, neither for the parameters nor for the parameters combined with the outcome variables. A robust method for the image texture analyses in future histogram muscle analyses has been performed. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Computational Ultrasound Imaging and Applications)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

25 pages, 21504 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Estimation of Thickness and Speed of Sound for Transverse Cortical Bone Imaging Using Phase Aberration Correction Methods: An In Silico and Ex Vivo Validation Study

by Huong Nguyen Minh, Marie Muller and Kay Raum

Appl. Sci. 2022, 12(10), 5283; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app12105283 - 23 May 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2412

Abstract

Delay-and-sum (DAS) beamforming of backscattered echoes is used for conventional ultrasound imaging. Although DAS beamforming is well suited for imaging in soft tissues, refraction, scattering, and absorption, porous mineralized tissues cause phase aberrations of reflected echoes and subsequent image degradation. The recently developed refraction corrected multi-focus technique uses subsequent focusing of waves at variable depths, the tracking of travel times of waves reflected from outer and inner cortical bone interfaces, the estimation of the shift needed to focus from one interface to another to determine cortical thickness (Ct.Th), and the speed of sound propagating in a radial bone direction (Ct.ν₁₁). The method was validated previously in silico and ex vivo on plate shaped samples. The aim of this study was to correct phase aberration caused by bone geometry (i.e., curvature and tilt with respect to the transducer array) and intracortical pores for the multi-focus approach. The phase aberration correction methods are based on time delay estimation via bone geometry differences to flat bone plates and via the autocorrelation and cross correlation of the reflected ultrasound waves from the endosteal bone interface. We evaluate the multi-focus approach by incorporating the phase aberration correction methods by numerical simulation and one experiment on a human tibia bone, and analyze the precision and accuracy of measuring Ct.Th and Ct.ν₁₁. Site-matched reference values of the cortical thickness of the human tibia bone were obtained from high-resolution peripheral computed tomography. The phase aberration correction methods resulted in a more precise (coefficient of variation of 5.7%) and accurate (root mean square error of 6.3%) estimation of Ct.Th, and a more precise (9.8%) and accurate (3.4%) Ct.ν₁₁ estimation, than without any phase aberration correction. The developed multi-focus method including phase aberration corrections provides local estimations of both cortical thickness and sound velocity and is proposed as a biomarker of cortical bone quality with high clinical potential for the prevention of osteoporotic fractures. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Computational Ultrasound Imaging and Applications)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

17 pages, 2445 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Hadamard Aperiodic Interval Codes for Parallel-Transmission 2D and 3D Synthetic Aperture Ultrasound Imaging

by Tarek Kaddoura and Roger J. Zemp

Appl. Sci. 2022, 12(10), 4917; https://doi.org/10.3390/app12104917 - 12 May 2022

Cited by 6 | Viewed by 1445

Abstract

We present a new set of near orthogonal codes which we call Hadamard Aperiodic Interval (HAPI) codes and demonstrate their utility for parallel multi-transmitter synthetic aperture imaging. The codes are tri-state and sparse. Locations of non-zero bits are based on marks in a sequence of aperiodic intervals, also known as a Golomb ruler. The values of non-zero bits are selected from Hadamard sequences that are mutually orthogonal. This ensures that cross-correlation sidelobe magnitudes between differing codes are bounded by unity while the autocorrelation approaches a delta function with mainlobe-to-sidelobe levels scaling with the number of non-zero bits. We use simulations to demonstrate the potential of the codes for synthetic aperture imaging. A multiplicity of transmitter elements is used to transmit codes simultaneously, with a different code for each element. Echo signals are received from a multiplicity of transducer elements in parallel. Channel data from each receiver element are cross-correlated with respective HAPI codes to estimate the transmit–receive signature associated with each transmitter–receiver pair while minimizing crosstalk. This estimate of the full transmit–receive synthetic aperture dataset is then used to form high-quality images demonstrating image quality and signal-to-noise ratio improvements over multiple flash angle imaging and synthetic aperture imaging methods for linear arrays. We also demonstrate simulated full volume synthetic aperture imaging with random sparse arrays, possible with one extended HAPI code-set transmit event. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Computational Ultrasound Imaging and Applications)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

11 pages, 3912 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Ultrasound Localization Microscopy in Liquid Metal Flows

by David Weik, Lars Grüter, Dirk Räbiger, Sanjay Singh, Tobias Vogt, Sven Eckert, Jürgen Czarske and Lars Büttner

Appl. Sci. 2022, 12(9), 4517; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app12094517 - 29 Apr 2022

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2256

Abstract

Liquid metal convection plays an important role in natural and technical processes. In experimental studies, an instrumentation with a sub-millimeter spatial resolution is required in an opaque fluid to resolve the flow field near the boundary layer. Using ultrasound methods, the trade-off between the frequency and imaging depth of typical laboratory experiments limits the spatial resolution. Therefore, the method of ultrasound localization microscopy (ULM) was introduced in liquid metal experiments for the first time in this study. To isolate the intrinsic scattering particles, an adaptive nonlinear beamformer was applied. As a result, an average spatial resolution of 188 μm could be achieved, which corresponded to a fraction of the ultrasound wavelength of 0.28. A convection experiment was measured using ULM. Due to the increased spatial resolution, the high-velocity gradients and the recirculation areas of a liquid metal convection experiment could be observed for the first time. The presented technique paves the way for in-depth flow studies of convective turbulent liquid metal flows that are close to the boundary layer. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Computational Ultrasound Imaging and Applications)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

14 pages, 2603 KiB

Open AccessArticle

B-Line Detection and Localization in Lung Ultrasound Videos Using Spatiotemporal Attention

by Hamideh Kerdegari, Nhat Tran Huy Phung, Angela McBride, Luigi Pisani, Hao Van Nguyen, Thuy Bich Duong, Reza Razavi, Louise Thwaites, Sophie Yacoub, Alberto Gomez and VITAL Consortium

Appl. Sci. 2021, 11(24), 11697; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app112411697 - 09 Dec 2021

Cited by 7 | Viewed by 2788

Abstract

The presence of B-line artefacts, the main artefact reflecting lung abnormalities in dengue patients, is often assessed using lung ultrasound (LUS) imaging. Inspired by human visual attention that enables us to process videos efficiently by paying attention to where and when it is required, we propose a spatiotemporal attention mechanism for B-line detection in LUS videos. The spatial attention allows the model to focus on the most task relevant parts of the image by learning a saliency map. The temporal attention generates an attention score for each attended frame to identify the most relevant frames from an input video. Our model not only identifies videos where B-lines show, but also localizes, within those videos, B-line related features both spatially and temporally, despite being trained in a weakly-supervised manner. We evaluate our approach on a LUS video dataset collected from severe dengue patients in a resource-limited hospital, assessing the B-line detection rate and the model’s ability to localize discriminative B-line regions spatially and B-line frames temporally. Experimental results demonstrate the efficacy of our approach for classifying B-line videos with an F1 score of up to 83.2% and localizing the most salient B-line regions both spatially and temporally with a correlation coefficient of 0.67 and an IoU of 69.7%, respectively. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Computational Ultrasound Imaging and Applications)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

30 pages, 12528 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Reflection-Mode Ultrasound Computed Tomography Based on Wavelet Processing for High-Contrast Anatomical and Morphometric Imaging

by Elise Doveri, Laurent Sabatier, Vincent Long and Philippe Lasaygues

Appl. Sci. 2021, 11(20), 9368; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app11209368 - 09 Oct 2021

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1796

Abstract

Medical B-mode ultrasound is widely used for the examination of children’s limbs, including soft tissue, muscle, and bone. However, for the accurate examination of the bone only, it is often replaced by more restrictive clinical modalities. Several authors have investigated ultrasonic imaging of bone to assess cortical thickness and/or to estimate the wave velocity through the internal structure. The present work focuses on the transverse slice imaging process using reflection-mode ultrasound computed tomography (USCT). The method is valid for imaging soft tissues with similar acoustic impedances, but in the presence of bone, the higher contrasts alter the propagation of ultrasonic waves and reduce the contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR). There is a need to change the methods used for the processing of ultrasonic signals. Our group has developed a wavelet-based coded excitation (WCE) method to process information in frequency and time. The objective of this study is to use the method to improve reflection-mode USCT, at low ultrasonic intensities, to better address organ morphometry. Experimental results on a newborn arm phantom and on an ex vivo chicken drumstick are presented, and the usefulness of this WCE-mode USCT is discussed. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Computational Ultrasound Imaging and Applications)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

Journal Menu

Journal Browser

Computational Ultrasound Imaging and Applications

Share This Special Issue

Special Issue Editors

Special Issue Information

Keywords

Related Special Issue

Published Papers (10 papers)

Editorial

Research

Further Information

Guidelines

MDPI Initiatives

Follow MDPI