SBIR Phase II: Developing a new platform technology for 3D ultrasound imaging

这个小型企业创新研究（SBIR）第二阶段项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是开发和商业化一种新的非侵入性临床前成像技术。 该平台技术将用于疾病研究或药物开发。 该项目将进一步开发和验证基于三维（3D）超声的成像平台，这是一种低成本，高通量的替代现有全身成像模式，并将提供比当前二维（2D）超声方法更高的灵敏度和视野。 该技术将降低全身临床前成像的成本，并使较小的研究组织能够使用该技术。 临床前疾病和药物开发研究的低成本成像工具的可用性增加，可以加速改善人类健康的进展，同时减少生命科学labors.The拟议项目的成本负担解决的问题，即二维超声是一个首选的成像模式在临床前研究由于足够的分辨率，高通量，低成本，但它遭受用户的变化和视野不足。 研究目标是继续开发和验证3D超声系统，克服用户可变性和视野不足的挑战。 具体的技术目标将是改进系统的硬件和软件，以提高吞吐量，将系统组件集成到面向客户的产品中，并校准和验证系统的预期临床前成像应用。预期的结果将是一种新的技术？一种自动化3D临床前超声系统，它将大大提高临床前超声成像的性能和能力，但仍将保留超声成像的低成本和高吞吐量特性。 这项新技术将满足全球几乎所有学术研究机构以及制药和合同研究组织的需求。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project is the development and commercialization of a new technology for non-invasive preclinical imaging. This platform technology will be used in studies of disease or in in drug development. The project will further develop and validate an imaging platform based on three-dimensional (3D) ultrasound, which is a low cost, high-throughput alternative to existing whole-body imaging modalities, and will provide more sensitivity and field of view than current two-dimensional (2D) ultrasound approaches. The technology developed will reduce costs of whole-body preclinical imaging, and enable access to this technology to smaller research organizations. Increased availability of a low-cost imaging tool for preclinical disease and drug development studies could accelerate progress in improving human health while reducing cost burdens on life science labs.The proposed project addresses the problem that 2D ultrasound is a preferred imaging modality in preclinical studies due to the adequate resolution, high throughput, and low cost; however, it suffers from user variability and inadequate field of view. The research objectives will be to continue the development and validation of a 3D ultrasound system which overcomes challenges of user variability and inadequate field of view. Specific technical goals will be to improve both the hardware and software of the system for increased throughput, integrating the system components into a cohesive customer-facing product, and calibrating and validating the system for its intended preclinical imaging application. Expected results will be a novel technology ? an automated 3D preclinical ultrasound system, which will substantially improve the performance and capabilities of preclinical ultrasound imaging, yet will retain the low-cost and high throughput characteristics of ultrasound imaging. This new technology will fill a need present in nearly every academic research institution as well as pharmaceutical and contract research organizations worldwide.