CAREER: Blind-Label and Label-Free Acoustic Far-Field Subwavelength Imaging

职业：盲标记和无标记声学远场亚波长成像

• 批准号: 2237619
• 负责人: Chu Ma
• 金额: $ 50万
• 依托单位: University of Wisconsin-Madison
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-06-01 至 2028-05-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2237619&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CAREER; Blind; Label; Free; Acoustic

This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) grant will enable new imaging methodologies that combine both hardware and software innovations to significantly improve the resolution and the practicality of acoustic imaging. In biomedical diagnosis, the imaging systems sought in this research will improve medical ultrasound imaging quality and expand examination applications. Locations in human and animal bodies, such as deep brain tissues, kidney stones with sub-millimeter sizes, and lesions on the blood vessel walls, which are difficult to access using the existing ultrasound technologies, will be accessible via the newly developed imaging systems. In underwater sensing, this research will provide enhanced sensing capabilities for underwater imaging/communication, underwater robots/vehicles, underwater infrastructure maintenance, fishery, marine biology, and underwater natural resource exploration. In non-destructive inspection, this research will enhance soil and rock imaging quality in agriculture and the mining industry, and support quality control in the manufacturing industry. The educational objective of this project is to promote and broaden participation in interdisciplinary acoustics research and STEM education at all levels. This objective will be accomplished through developing an education workshop for high school interdisciplinary acoustics education, creating a pipeline that combines undergraduate courses with lab-based projects for undergraduate students, especially those from underrepresented groups, and demonstrating interdisciplinary acoustics research to general public through interactive exhibitions and public demonstrations.This project will provide new solutions to the long-existing tradeoff between resolution and penetration depth in far-field acoustic imaging. Most of the existing subwavelength imaging approaches that address this trade-off require exogenous “labels”, such as metamaterials and contrast agents, to be deposited close to the objects. Those labels need to be either static or precisely tracked during imaging. Therefore, current label depositions are extremely restrictive in practical applications. This project will provide blind-label and label-free solutions to overcome the restrictions. Blind-label approaches will be developed for situations where the external label deposition is viable, e.g., imaging in shallow water and imaging of areas in and around blood vessels. Label-free approaches will be developed for situations where the external label deposition is difficult and impractical, such as deep underwater sonar imaging, non-destructive structure inspection, and biomedical imaging of deep tissue regions. Both blind-label and label-free approaches will follow a hardware and software co-design framework that consists of the two parts as follows: 1) spatial mixing: a physical imaging process based on blind labels, which are randomly deposited acoustic scatterers, or label-free environmental inhomogeneities, and 2) computational reconstruction: computational signal processing and imaging reconstruction using algorithms co-optimized with the spatial wave mixing process. Beyond concept and methodology developments, in-lab imaging systems emulating application-specific environmental and hardware/software conditions will be developed to validate the proposed blind-label and label-free approaches in the areas of biomedical ultrasonography, underwater sonar imaging, and structure non-destructive testing.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.

该学院早期职业发展（CAREER）补助金将使新的成像方法，联合收割机结合硬件和软件创新，以显着提高分辨率和声学成像的实用性。在生物医学诊断中，本研究所寻求的成像系统将提高医学超声成像质量并扩展检查应用。人体和动物体内的部位，如脑深部组织、亚毫米大小的肾结石和血管壁上的病变，这些使用现有超声技术难以进入的部位，将通过新开发的成像系统进入。在水下传感方面，这项研究将为水下成像/通信、水下机器人/车辆、水下基础设施维护、渔业、海洋生物学和水下自然资源勘探提供增强的传感能力。在无损检测方面，该研究将提高农业和采矿业的土壤和岩石成像质量，并支持制造业的质量控制。该项目的教育目标是促进和扩大各级跨学科声学研究和STEM教育的参与。这一目标将通过为高中跨学科声学教育开发一个教育研讨会来实现，为本科生，特别是那些代表性不足的群体，创建一个将本科课程与基于实验室的项目相结合的管道，并透过互动展览和公众示范，向公众展示跨学科的声学研究。这个项目将为长期以来，在远场声学成像中分辨率和穿透深度之间的现有折衷。大多数现有的亚波长成像方法，解决这个权衡需要外源的“标签”，如超材料和造影剂，被沉积接近的对象。这些标签需要是静态的或在成像期间精确跟踪。因此，目前的标签沉积在实际应用中受到极大的限制。该项目将提供盲标和免标解决方案，以克服这些限制。将针对外部标记沉积可行的情况开发盲法，例如，在浅水中成像和在血管中和周围区域成像。无标记方法将被开发用于外部标记沉积困难且不切实际的情况，例如深水水下声纳成像、非破坏性结构检查和深层组织区域的生物医学成像。盲标记和无标记方法都将遵循硬件和软件协同设计框架，该框架由以下两部分组成：1）空间混合：基于盲标记的物理成像过程，盲标记是随机沉积的声学散射体或无标记的环境不均匀性，以及2）计算重建：使用与空间波混合过程共同优化的算法的计算信号处理和成像重建。除了概念和方法的发展，在实验室成像系统模拟应用特定的环境和硬件/软件条件将被开发，以验证拟议的盲标记和无标记的方法，在生物医学超声领域，水下声纳成像，和结构非-该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并被认为值得通过利用基金会的智力价值进行评估来支持和更广泛的影响审查标准。