PFI-TT: High-Resolution Medical Imaging using Ultrasound

这一创新技术转化伙伴关系(PFI-TT)项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力是通过开发一种能够进行类似MRI的高质量扫描的基于超声波的设备，促进更好的医疗筛查和诊断，特别是乳腺癌检测。与标准的2D/3D筛查乳房X光检查相比，该设备减少了假阴性和50%或更多的假阳性，每年仅在美国就可以避免80万例不必要的活检和780万例不必要的后续乳房扫描。这意味着每年总共减少35亿美元的医疗支出。在商业上，这种设备预计将比现有方法具有多种竞争优势，更舒适，更安全的检查条件，同时提供更好的诊断能力，并将影响乳房成像设备市场，全球估计为25.6亿美元，其中55%的市场集中在美国。最后，这项技术在许多其他有益的医学成像应用中具有巨大的潜力，例如儿科、前列腺癌检测、肌肉骨骼成像和脑成像。对于这些应用，进一步评估定量超声的临床益处是至关重要的，这将极大地促进该设备的开发。拟议的项目致力于开发一种用于医学成像的无压缩、无辐射和基于超声波的成像设备。虽然传统的手持式超声(HHUS)或自动乳房超声(ABUS)设备会丢弃绝大多数超声数据，但该设备旨在利用全部数据内容。预计这将使重建的高精度图像具有卓越的分辨率，可与磁共振成像相媲美，基于3D全物理地震“全波形反转”方法获得。这个项目将使用真实的超声数据来演示这种高分辨率成像方法。到目前为止，这只是用模拟的超声波数据来演示的。挑战包括超声探头的设计和表征，以及超声数据质量的最大化。与传统的超声不同，该方法需要对探头的辐射模式进行彻底的表征。将通过精确测量已知介质(例如水)中传输的超声波波场的水听器来实现表征。将测量结果与全物理数值模拟进行比较；当获得良好的拟合时，将确定源辐射方向图。微调和仔细选择发射的信号将有助于降低噪音水平。由此产生的高质量数据将通过对小物体的图像重建进行测试。这些多项活动将在获得高质量测量方面发挥关键作用-实现高分辨率、全物理、定量超声成像。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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 Partnerships for Innovation – Technology Translation (PFI-TT) project is to facilitate better medical screening and diagnostics, in particular for breast cancer detection, by developing an ultrasound-based device capable of MRI-like and quality scans. With a reduction in false negatives and 50% or more in false positives compared with standard 2D/3D screening mammograms, this device could avoid 800,000 unnecessary biopsies and 7.8 million unnecessary follow-up breast scans per year in the USA alone. This represents an overall $3.5 billion per year reduction in healthcare expenditure. Commercially, this device is expected to have multiple competitive advantages over existing methods, with greater comfort and safer exam conditions while providing better diagnostic capabilities and will impact the breast imaging device market, estimated to be $2.56 billion globally, with 55% of this market concentrated in the USA. Finally, this technology has significant potential for many other beneficial medical imaging applications, such as pediatrics, prostate cancer detection, musculoskeletal imaging, and brain imaging. For these applications, further assessing the clinical benefits of quantitative ultrasound is crucial, which will be greatly facilitated by the development of this device. The proposed project works toward developing a compression-free, radiation-free, and ultrasound-based imaging device for medical imaging. While conventional hand-held ultrasound (HHUS) or automated breast ultrasound (ABUS) devices discard the vast majority of ultrasound data, the device is designed to exploit the full data content. This is expected to enable reconstruction of highly accurate images with exceptional resolution, comparable to MRI, obtained based on 3D full-physics seismic “full waveform inversion” methods. This project will demonstrate this high-resolution imaging method using real ultrasound data. To date, this has only been demonstrated using simulated ultrasound data. Challenges include ultrasound probe design and characterization, and maximization of ultrasound data quality. Unlike conventional ultrasound, the proposed method necessitates a thorough characterization of probe radiation patterns. Characterization will be achieved with accurate hydrophone measurements of transmitted ultrasound wavefields in known media (e.g., water). Measurements are compared to full-physics numerical simulations; the source radiation pattern will be determined when a good fit is obtained. Fine tuning and careful selection of the emitted signal will help reduce noise levels. The resulting high-quality data will be tested with image reconstructions on small objects. These multiple activities will play a critical role in obtaining high quality measurements— enabling high resolution, full-physics, quantitative ultrasound imaging.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.