Development & Clinical Translation of Scalable HPC Ultrasound Models

超声波作为诊断成像工具的使用是众所周知的，特别是在怀孕期间，超声波被用来创建胎儿发育的图像。近年来，越来越多的超声治疗应用也被证明。治疗性超声的目的是改变组织的功能或结构，而不是产生解剖图像。这是可能的，因为超声波引起的机械振动可以以不同的方式影响组织，例如，通过使组织升温，或通过产生内部辐射力来搅动细胞或组织支架。这些超声波生物效应为开发治疗癌症等重大疾病的新方法提供了巨大的潜力，改善了药物的输送，同时最大限度地减少了副作用，并治疗了广泛的神经和精神疾病。治疗性超声的所有应用所面临的基本挑战是，超声能量必须准确、安全、无创地传递到体内的目标区域。这很困难，因为骨骼和其他组织界面会严重扭曲超声光束的形状。这对超声治疗的安全性和有效性产生了重大影响，并为这些令人兴奋的技术的广泛临床接受提出了一个主要障碍。原则上，任何对超声波光束的扭曲都可以用先进的计算机模型来解释。然而，基础物理是复杂的，并且建模问题的规模需要极其大量的计算机内存。使用现有的软件，在超级计算机上运行的单个模拟可能需要许多天才能完成，这对于临床有用来说太长了。这项提议的目的是开发更有效的计算机模型，以准确预测超声波如何在人体中传播。这将涉及实现新的方法，有效地将计算问题划分到超级计算机上大量相互连接的计算机内核上。减少大量输出数据的新方法也将被实施，包括在模拟运行时计算临床重要参数，以及优化数据存储到磁盘的方式。我们还将开发一个专业的用户界面，并将代码打包在医疗软件所需的监管框架内。这将允许最终用户，如医生，轻松地将代码用于治疗超声的应用，而无需成为计算机科学专家。通过与临床合作伙伴的合作，这些计算机模型将被应用于不同的治疗性超声应用，从而为每位患者精确预测超声能量的传递。

The use of ultrasound as a diagnostic imaging tool is well known, particularly during pregnancy where ultrasound is used to create images of the developing foetus. In recent years, a growing number of therapeutic applications of ultrasound have also been demonstrated. The goal of therapeutic ultrasound is to modify the function or structure of the tissue, rather than produce an anatomical image. This is possible because the mechanical vibrations caused by the ultrasound waves can affect tissue in different ways, for example, by causing the tissue to heat up, or by generating internal radiation forces that can agitate the cells or tissue scaffolding. These ultrasound bioeffects offer a huge potential to develop new ways to treat major diseases such as cancer, to improve the delivery of drugs while minimising side-effects, and to treat a wide spectrum of neurological and psychiatric conditions.The fundamental challenge shared by all applications of therapeutic ultrasound is that the ultrasound energy must be delivered accurately, safely, and non-invasively to the target region within the body. This is difficult because bones and other tissue interfaces can severely distort the shape of the ultrasound beam. This has a significant impact on the safety and effectiveness of therapeutic ultrasound, and presents a major hurdle for the wider clinical acceptance of these exciting technologies. In principle, any distortions to the ultrasound beam could be accounted for using advanced computer models. However, the underlying physics is complex, and the scale of the modelling problem requires extremely large amounts of computer memory. Using existing software, a single simulation running on a supercomputer can take many days to complete, which is too long to be clinically useful.The aim of this proposal is to develop more efficient computer models to accurately predict how ultrasound waves travel through the human body. This will involve implementing new approaches that efficiently divide the computational problem across large numbers of interconnected computer cores on a supercomputer. New approaches to reduce the huge quantity of output data will also be implemented, including calculating clinically important parameters while the simulation runs, and optimising how the data is stored to disk. We will also develop a professional user interface and package the code within the regulatory framework required for medical software. This will allow end-users, such as doctors, to easily use the code for applications in therapeutic ultrasound without needing to be an expert in computer science. In collaboration with our clinical partners, the computer models will then be applied to different applications of therapeutic ultrasound to allow the precise delivery of ultrasound energy to be predicted for the individual patient.