I-Corps: Advanced Ultrasonic Imaging for Medical and Non-Destructive Testing Applications

I-Corps项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力是开发用于医疗和无损检测应用的下一代高分辨率超声成像技术。这项技术将改进现有的成像技术，使成像材料的非常详细的物理和空间特性能够被确定，超出了目前超声、x射线或MRI的能力。这将增强医疗和非破坏性成像技术的能力，例如，通过在医学扫描中更准确地识别和诊断肿瘤组织，或改进对制造零件缺陷的识别。结合超声波的优点，特别是安全性、速度、便携性、患者舒适度和成本，这项技术具有广泛影响的潜力。在商业上，这项技术将使医生能够更快、更准确地做出诊断。这将允许更早和更准确地识别肿瘤，减少假阳性和后续程序的数量。这将最终提高诊断效率，降低成本并改善患者的治疗效果。在非破坏性测试应用中，该技术将实现以前只能通过更昂贵和耗时的技术（如x射线）获得的成像细节。这个I-Corps项目结合了超声波成像和地球科学领域的技术，显著改进了现有的毫米到厘米级成像技术。该技术采用了一种先进的地球物理成像方法，称为全波形反演（FWI），用于医疗和无损检测目的。全波形反演通常用于地球成像。S构造和发现油气储层。该技术不是在地震尺度（m到km）上应用，而是在超声波尺度（mm到cm）上应用，以生成具有嵌入物理特性的高分辨率三维图像。研究的重点是软件和硬件的开发。正在开发的软件算法可以在几秒到几分钟内从超声波测量中构建图像。这是通过使用尖端、高效的算法和高性能计算基础设施实现的。原型硬件的研究和开发也在进行中，这对于生成高质量的超声数据输入成像算法是必要的。迄今为止，使用全波形反演技术的快速，高分辨率的二维和三维图像构建已在一系列合成？ultrasonic-scale对象。这表明图像可以快速生成，包含材料密度，刚度和衰减等材料属性的全范围。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is the development of a next-generation, high-resolution ultrasonic imaging technique for medical and non-destructive testing applications. This technique will improve on existing imaging technologies by enabling highly detailed physical and spatial properties of the imaged material to be determined, beyond what is currently capable from ultrasound, X-Rays or MRI. This will enhance the capability of medical and non-destructive imaging technologies, for example, by allowing more accurate identification and diagnoses of tumor tissues in medical scans, or improving the identification of defects in manufactured parts. Combined with the benefits of ultrasound, in particular, safety, speed, portability, patient comfort, and cost, this technology has potential for broad impact. Commercially, the technology will enable medical practitioners to make diagnoses faster and with higher accuracy. This will allow earlier and more precise identification of tumors, reducing the number of false positives and follow-up procedures. This will ultimately increase diagnostic efficiency, reduce costs and improve patient outcomes. In a non-destructive testing application, this technology will enable imaging detail that was previously only available with more expensive and time-consuming techniques such as X-Rays.This I-Corps project combines techniques from the fields of ultrasonic imaging and the geosciences to significantly improve existing mm- to cm-scale imaging technologies. The technology adapts an advanced geophysical imaging method known as full waveform inversion (FWI) for medical and non-destructive testing purposes. Full waveform inversion is conventionally applied for imaging the earth?s structure and to discover oil and gas reservoirs. Instead of applying the technique at seismic scales (m to km), the company applies it at the ultrasonic scale (mm to cm) to generate high-resolution 3-dimensional images with embedded physical properties. Research is focused on both software and hardware development. Software algorithms are being developed which construct images from ultrasonic measurements within seconds to minutes. This is enabled through the use of cutting-edge, highly efficient algorithms and high-performance computing infrastructure. Research and development of prototype hardware is also being undertaken, necessary for generating high-quality ultrasonic data for input into the imaging algorithms. To-date, rapid, high-resolution 2- and 3-dimensional image construction using full waveform inversion techniques has been demonstrated on a range of ?synthetic? ultrasonic-scale objects. This demonstrates that images can be quickly generated, containing a full range of material properties including material density, stiffness and attenuation.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.