Photoacoustic (PA) or optoacoustic imaging is a relatively new imaging modality based on the detection of light-excited ultrasound waves, has emerged as one of the most exciting research areas in biomedical imaging over the past decade [1-4]. In PA imaging, nanosecond pulsed (or modulated) electromagnetic radiation is delivered into tissues to excite ultrasound waves via photon absorption and t...

Ultrasound is well-suited for intraoperative imaging because it is cheap, portable, provides images in real-time, and does not use ionizing radiation. However hand-held ultrasound is user-dependent because it requires dexterity to obtain high-quality images, and certain features such as bone or air cannot be penetrated. In contrast, preoperative imaging provides much greater anatomical detail a...

Three-dimensional ultrasound is a powerful imaging technique, but it requires thousands of sensors and complex hardware. Very recently, the discovery of compressive sensing has shown that the signal structure can be exploited to reduce the burden posed by traditional sensing requirements. In this spirit, we have designed a simple ultrasound imaging device that can perform three-dimensional imag...

Multi-modality fusion imaging for targeted prostate biopsy is difficult because of prostate motion during the biopsy procedure. A closed-loop control mechanism is proposed to improve the efficacy and safety of the biopsy procedure, which uses real-time ultrasound and spatial tracking as feedback to adjust the registration between a preoperative 3D image (e.g. MRI) and real-time ultrasound image...

This paper proposes new enhancement models to the methods of nonlinear anisotropic diffusion to greatly reduce speckle and preserve image features in medical ultrasound images. By incorporating local physical characteristics of the image, in this case scatterer density, in addition to the gradient, into existing tensorbased image diffusion methods, we were able to greatly improve the performanc...

Small supernumerary marker chromosomes (sSMC) are still a major problem in clinical cytogenetics as they cannot be identified or characterized unambiguously by conventional cytogenetics alone. On the other hand, and perhaps more importantly in prenatal settings, there is a challenging situation for counseling how to predict the risk for an abnormal phenotype, especially in cases with a de novo ...

In this paper we have surveyed the recent developments in the area of in-body ultrasound imaging for cardiovascular interventions. With miniaturized ultrasound sensors integrated at the tip of the instruments (catheters, needles, endoscopes), the local anatomical sites can be imaged with high accuracy. We have covered the applications of TEE (Transesophageal echocardiography), ICE (intracardiac...

We have developed a non-invasive ultrasound-based method for performing particle image velocimetry in vivo. This method provides high resolution multi-component blood flow data with high temporal resolution. The method takes advantage of the non-linear ultrasound backscatter characteristics of small gas-filled microbubbles (ultrasound contrast) that are seeded into the blood stream [1]. Prelimi...

In recent years, noninvasive thermal treatment by using high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) has high potential in tumor treatment. The goal of this research is to develop an ultrasound imaging-guided robotic HIFU ablation system for tumor treatment. The system integrates the technologies of ultrasound image-assisted guidance, robotic positioning control, and HIFU treatment planning. With t...