IEEE open journal of ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control最新文献

{"title":"Preliminary Demonstration of Pulse-Echo Imaging With a Long Monolithic Flexible CMUT Array","authors":"Amirhossein Omidvar;Robert N. Rohling;Edmond Cretu;Mark E. Cresswell;Antony J. Hodgson","doi":"10.1109/OJUFFC.2024.3506532","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/OJUFFC.2024.3506532","url":null,"abstract":"Conformal ultrasound imaging using large-area transducer arrays is an emerging technology with significant potential for real-time, continuous, functional, and health monitoring applications. This study addresses the challenge of fabricating such transducer arrays by presenting the development and preliminary imaging performance of a monolithic flexible capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer (CMUT) array—the longest reported to date. A 128-element, 91 mm long flexible array was designed and fabricated using a lithography process, with SU-8 CMUT structures on a bendable polyimide substrate. The array was then packaged by mounting it onto a flexible printed circuit board and coated with a thin polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) layer for in vivo testing. Electrical impedance measurements confirmed the full functionality of all transducer elements, with an average center resonant frequency of 5.84 MHz (SD: 0.14 MHz). Pulse-echo imaging experiments demonstrated the array’s capability to detect specular reflections and resolve fine features under various curvatures. In vivo scans revealed outlines of a finger and superficial tissues in the forearm. Despite the limitations associated with the lack of custom front-end electronics and low signal-to-noise ratio beamforming strategies, this work demonstrates the feasibility of manufacturing a flexible CMUT array suitable for large-area conformal sonography.","PeriodicalId":73301,"journal":{"name":"IEEE open journal of ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control","volume":"4 ","pages":"191-203"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-11-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=10767731","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142798049","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The 3D Estimation of Mechanical Wave Velocities in the Heart: Methods and Insights","authors":"Mohammad Mohajery;Sebastien Salles;Torvald Espeland;Morten Smedsrud Wigen;Solveig Fadnes;Lasse Lovstakken","doi":"10.1109/OJUFFC.2024.3494693","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/OJUFFC.2024.3494693","url":null,"abstract":"The velocity of mechanical waves (MW) in the heart reflects myocardial tissue properties. Different wave velocity estimation methods have been proposed, using the slope of the wave projection in M-mode, or based on the gradient of the time-of-flight (TOF) map (gradient method). In this work, we compare these methods using a simulation and 3D wave propagation in vivo. Waves were detected using both clutter filter wave imaging (CFWI) and tissue Doppler imaging (TDI). The effect of pipeline parameters on velocity estimation was studied. Finally, an in vivo investigation was made for healthy controls and patients with aortic stenosis. When the wave propagation was mainly in-plane, all methods yielded similar results, verified using both simulations and in vivo data. However, velocity overestimation occurred due to misalignment between the M-line and the wave propagation direction, and for wave-view misalignment when using the 2D gradient method. The gradient method was sensitive to processing parameters, where smoothing of the TOF map also led to an overestimation of the wave velocities. For our data, CFWI provided the most robust results, however, the choice of filter cutoff influenced the output, which became similar to TDI for high cutoff velocities. Our study shows that the gradient method can provide similar results as the M-mode slope when the wave propagation is aligned in-plane, and further provide localized wave velocity estimates in 2D and 3D, limited by smoothing requirements. This can be advantageous for mapping heterogeneous tissue properties, and the method can provide valuable clinical insight in the future.","PeriodicalId":73301,"journal":{"name":"IEEE open journal of ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control","volume":"4 ","pages":"177-190"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-11-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=10747501","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142679298","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Direct Digital Simultaneous Phase-Amplitude Noise and Allan Deviation Measurement System","authors":"Marco Pomponio;Archita Hati;Craig Nelson","doi":"10.1109/OJUFFC.2024.3487147","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/OJUFFC.2024.3487147","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, we present a direct digital measurement system capable of simultaneously measuring phase noise, amplitude noise, and Allan deviation with and without cross-correlation. The residual phase noise of the single-channel system achieves \u0000<inline-formula> <tex-math>$mathscr {L}left ({{1 text {Hz}}}right)~ textrm {=} -143 text {dBc/Hz}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>\u0000 for a 10 MHz input signal and an Allan deviation noise floor of \u0000<inline-formula> <tex-math>$3.2 times 10^{-15}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>\u0000 at 1 second averaging time (\u0000<inline-formula> <tex-math>$tau $ </tex-math></inline-formula>\u0000). The system’s performance improves as expected with cross-correlation, resulting in an average-limited residual white noise floor of −185 dBc/Hz after only a few minutes of averaging, an improvement of 30 dB compared to a single-channel system. It also reaches an average limited flicker phase noise floor of \u0000<inline-formula> <tex-math>$mathscr {L}left ({{1 text {Hz}}}right) ~textrm {=} -160 text {dBc/Hz}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>\u0000 within two days, with an Allan deviation of \u0000<inline-formula> <tex-math>$5 times 10^{-16}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>\u0000 @ \u0000<inline-formula> <tex-math>$tau ~textrm {=}1 text {second}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>\u0000. To our knowledge, this represents the lowest noise performance ever reported for a digital measurement system. Our solution is based on a pair of high-performance analog-to-digital converters and a single system-on-a-chip (SoC) with multiple processors and a field programmable gate array (FPGA). The architecture allows for processing all data samples in real-time without dead-time between calculation frames, enabling the fastest averaging possible during cross-correlation.","PeriodicalId":73301,"journal":{"name":"IEEE open journal of ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control","volume":"4 ","pages":"160-170"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=10737107","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142600120","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Rochelle Salt Revisited for Eco-Designed Ultrasonic Transducers","authors":"Etienne Lemaire;Atilla Atli;Dominique Certon","doi":"10.1109/OJUFFC.2024.3475348","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/OJUFFC.2024.3475348","url":null,"abstract":"This paper details some characterization results of selected Rochelle salt based transducers previously or recently fabricated using various techniques. Several elements of the expected increasing lifetime are shown. Polarization results comparing monocrystalline and polycrystalline structures show that the former is ferroelectric and strongly piezoelectric as expected. The second behaves as a piezoelectric and is strongly electrostrictive, reaching a significant displacement when subjected to high voltage. Because Rochelle salt could be the lowest environmental footprint ferroelectric and piezoelectric, it is an ecological smart material. It may have some limitations, but also circular and recoverable highly interesting properties. Thus, the possibility of revisiting the Rochelle salt based technology for disposable, ecological or eco-designed efficient acoustic transducer is here illustrated and discussed.","PeriodicalId":73301,"journal":{"name":"IEEE open journal of ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control","volume":"4 ","pages":"171-176"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=10707200","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142600121","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"3-D Object Reconstruction From Outdoor Ultrasonic Image and Variation Autoencoder","authors":"Ryotaro Ohara;Yuto Yasuda;Riku Hamabe;Shun Sato;Ishii Toru;Shintaro Izumi;Hiroshi Kawaguchi","doi":"10.1109/OJUFFC.2024.3466090","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/OJUFFC.2024.3466090","url":null,"abstract":"We present a technique for three-dimensional (3D) object reconstruction utilizing an ultrasonic array sensor and a variational autoencoder (VAE) within a high-interference environment. In scenarios where optical instruments such as cameras and LiDAR are impractical, the utilization of air-coupled ultrasonic waves for 3D measurements has emerged as a viable alternative. Nevertheless, deploying this technology in high-interference settings, particularly outdoor environments, has presented significant challenges. To tackle this challenge, we have developed and established a methodology for the 3D reconstruction of stationary objects by combining the time-of-flight point cloud data acquired through beamforming with the deep learning model VAE. This study proceeds by elucidating the procedure for conducting beamforming and measuring distances using ultrasonic waves. Subsequently, we expound upon an experimental methodology that employs 3D object reconstruction and associated techniques. Finally, we present the results obtained from attaching an ultrasonic sensor to a utility pole and conducting ultrasonic measurements. Our investigation focuses on four distinct types of objects: boxes, motorbikes, humans, and reflectors. The measurement system was positioned 5 m above the ground on a utility pole situated alongside the road. The objects selected for measurement were situated in stationary positions within a \u0000<inline-formula> <tex-math>$3~text {m}^{{3}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>\u0000 area, with a maximum distance of 10 m from the utility pole. The objective of this study is to assess the efficacy of ultrasonic measurements and object reconstruction techniques under these specified conditions. The results indicate a precision of 0.939, a recall of 0.868, and an F-value of 0.902, which are considered sufficient for the application of ultrasonic waves.","PeriodicalId":73301,"journal":{"name":"IEEE open journal of ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control","volume":"4 ","pages":"140-149"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-09-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=10685487","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142376626","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Investigation of Non-Linearities in Medical Ultrasound Imaging Probes by Characterizing Free and Clamped Capacitances","authors":"Thong Huynh;Trym Haakon Eggen;Lars Hoff","doi":"10.1109/OJUFFC.2024.3459858","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/OJUFFC.2024.3459858","url":null,"abstract":"Tissue harmonic imaging requires good control of the nonlinearity in the ultrasound probe, as transmitted second harmonics from the probe may interfere with tissue harmonics and degrade image quality. We have studied the nonlinearity in four different medical ultrasound probes by measuring the capacitive part of their electrical impedances under varying electric fields, at frequencies well below and above the resonances. The probes were made with two different piezoelectric materials, piezoceramic PZT and single-crystal PMN-PT, with either soft backing operating at half-wavelength resonance or hard backing operating at quarter-wavelength resonance. When the applied electric field amplitude E was increased from \u0000<inline-formula> <tex-math>$mathrm {0.05~V/mu m}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>\u0000 to \u0000<inline-formula> <tex-math>$mathrm {0.5~V/mu m}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>\u0000, we observed an increase in both the capacitance at high frequency, interpreted as clamped conditions, and at low frequency, interpreted as free conditions. This is a nonlinear phenomenon as these capacitances will not change in the linear regime. The increase in free capacitance was from 4 to 10 times larger than the increase in clamped capacitance for all the investigated probes. This indicates a stronger nonlinearity for the free capacitance. At the low-frequency excitation, we observed distortion in the current passing through the acoustic stack corresponding to a relative second harmonic level of −20 dB. We conclude that the nonlinear impedance of the acoustic stack in the investigated probes was primarily caused by nonlinearities in the mechanical coefficients, while contributions from dielectric nonlinearity were negligible.","PeriodicalId":73301,"journal":{"name":"IEEE open journal of ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control","volume":"4 ","pages":"116-125"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=10679659","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142368493","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Air-Coupled Ultrasonic Inspection of Foods: A Review","authors":"Anabella Giacomozzi;Jose Benedito;Tomás E. Gómez Álvarez-Arenas;Jose V. García-Perez","doi":"10.1109/OJUFFC.2024.3457503","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/OJUFFC.2024.3457503","url":null,"abstract":"In the context of the ongoing digital revolution, the food industry grapples with significant challenges concerning quality control, safety, production efficiency, and economic viability. Tackling these challenges requires analyzing a large volume of samples-preferably the whole production-to extract the maximum amount of information, facilitating food processing optimization, quality assurance, safety protocols, and minimizing the energetic impact. Developing monitoring systems for the non-invasive, accurate and real-time measurement of compositional properties, texture, and the detection of foreign bodies throughout the entire production remains a challenge in the agri-food sector. This challenge reflects that these properties affect both quality and food safety but also that current technologies are not capable of monitoring them at an industrial level. Over recent decades, ultrasound technology has garnered significant attention from stakeholders across the food supply chain owing to its potential to revolutionize food industry automation. Ultrasound inspection offers numerous advantages, including the rapid, precise, and cost-effective assessment of product properties, as well as the real-time monitoring of internal quality attributes across various stages of food processing. By interacting with matter, sound waves provide valuable insights into the composition, structure, and physical state of food constituents through changes in velocity, attenuation, and spectral response. This review summarizes recent findings in the use of air-coupled ultrasound inspection for ensuring food quality and safety control.","PeriodicalId":73301,"journal":{"name":"IEEE open journal of ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control","volume":"4 ","pages":"100-115"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=10679167","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142320441","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Robust Non-Parametric Estimation of Speckle Probability Densities and gCNR","authors":"Håvard Kjellmo Arnestad;Ole Marius Hoel Rindal;Andreas Austeng;Sven Peter Näsholm","doi":"10.1109/OJUFFC.2024.3445868","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/OJUFFC.2024.3445868","url":null,"abstract":"In ultrasound imaging, speckle originates from a large amount of sub-resolution scatterers within the medium. In idealized cases, the speckle envelope statistics follow a Rayleigh distribution, but in practical pulse-echo imaging, the distribution depends on both the imaging system and the underlying tissue structure. Estimating envelope statistics is part of quantitative ultrasound workflows and is also important for image quality assessment as it relates to lesion and tissue detectability. A concrete example is the generalized contrast-to-noise ratio (gCNR), which is a functional of two pixel-value probability density functions (PDFs) from different speckle regions. Such speckle PDFs have, by convention, been estimated from data using histograms, but the accuracy of these estimates can be affected by the nontrivial selection and tuning of the binning parameters. However, the statistics literature widely advocates kernel density estimation (KDE) as a better alternative to histogram-based approaches. In this article, we propose applying a KDE-based method to estimate speckle PDFs in medical ultrasound imaging. The method is practically tuning-free and leverages the Box-Cox transformation to achieve best-in-class performance across a wide range of test cases, and is also robust in cases where gCNR estimation may otherwise fail, such as for skewed distributions that may arise with adaptive beamformers. Furthermore, this work highlights theoretical aspects related to the estimation of PDFs and derived quantities, including the gCNR.","PeriodicalId":73301,"journal":{"name":"IEEE open journal of ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control","volume":"4 ","pages":"89-99"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-08-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=10638550","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142090778","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Origin, Development, and Applications of Air-Coupled Broadband Ultrasounds for the Study of Tissues and Water Relations in Plant Leaves: A Review","authors":"Lola Fariñas;Domingo Sancho-Knapik;José J. Peguero-Pina;Eustaquio Gil-Pelegrín;Tomás E. Gómez Álvarez-Arenas","doi":"10.1109/OJUFFC.2024.3433316","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/OJUFFC.2024.3433316","url":null,"abstract":"This paper reviews the origin, development and use of air-coupled ultrasonic techniques for the study of plant leaf tissues and their water relations. The two techniques proposed so far are included: Non-Contact Resonant Ultrasound Spectroscopy and Non-Resonant Time Domain Transmittance. While both are completely non-invasive, non-destructive and fast, the former has been used to determine water potential, turgor loss point and differential behavior of various leaf tissues, and has been extensively tested for different species, both in vivo and ex vivo in parallel with in-field experiments; while the latter has recently been proposed as a universal technique that can be applied to plant leaves regardless of the possibility of exciting thickness resonances.","PeriodicalId":73301,"journal":{"name":"IEEE open journal of ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control","volume":"4 ","pages":"77-88"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=10608179","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141965502","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Determination of Elastic Parameters of Thin Layers Used in Paintings by Air-Coupled Ultrasound Transmission Measurements Under Varying Incidence","authors":"Victor Takahashi;Michaël Lematre;Jérôme Fortineau;Marc Lethiecq","doi":"10.1109/OJUFFC.2024.3413604","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/OJUFFC.2024.3413604","url":null,"abstract":"Paintings are intricate structures made up of multiple layers of materials that possess different properties and thicknesses. Due to their fragility, they can be damaged by exposure to various environmental factors such very large amplitude vibrations, as well as temperature and humidity variations. Restorers use various techniques such as raking light, x-rays, infrared, and UV to gather information about the condition of the artwork. Unlike these methods, ultrasonic techniques use elastic waves and can thus provide information about the mechanical properties of the materials and their interfaces. The goal of this work is twofold. First, it consists in numerically analyzing the sensitivity of elastic parameters of painting layers through their influence on the acoustic transmission coefficient and dispersion curves. Then, an experimental device is set up to confirm some of these results by the determination of the values of the elastic parameters of the constituent layers of paintings. To this aim, we have developed an original association of numerical and experimental methods for characterization and determination of the layer elastic parameters of some materials used in paintings. A matrix stiffness model associated to a genetic algorithm are used for the numerical study and optimization process between the theoretical transmission coefficient and the experimental one. Then, focused Air-Coupled Transducers (ACTs) in conjunction with a rotary motor are used to perform measurements of transmitted signal amplitude on several components used in paintings under various angles of incidence. Our results concerning the determination of elastic parameters values on various materials including plexiglass (PMMA), acrylic paint, varnish, gesso and wood, taken as single plates, and bi-layered structures, are strongly supported by theoretical results obtained using the matrix stiffness model.","PeriodicalId":73301,"journal":{"name":"IEEE open journal of ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control","volume":"4 ","pages":"126-139"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=10558716","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142377117","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}