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Imaging and Detection with Frequency-Separated Unfocused Ultrasound

Presently, we are examining new ultrasound methods that can operate at reduced frequencies and are thusly suited for transcranial propagation. A frequency-separation method uses a reconstruction approach designed to resolve two-dimensional radial and axial information from a single stationary transmitter and a single receiver. Like traditional ultrasound backscatter imaging, the emitter is produces an acoustic field that contains a large bandwidth. However...

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Intraoperative Brain-Shift Monitor

Brain shift during neurosurgery results in misregistration between the presurgical MRI or CT scan and the operating field and leads to inaccurate surgical margins. If the degree of brain shift is well known, the presurgical imaging can be adjusted to correspond with the current surgical field. Ultrasound may offer a portable, noninvasive, non-ionizing, rapid, real-time method of tracking brain shift during surgery or in emergency settings. The FUS lab has been testing techniques of 3D motion tracking using an array of...

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Non-Invasive Intracranial Pressure (ICP) Monitor

Intracranial pressure (ICP) is a critical monitoring parameter for head trauma patients and post-operative neurosurgical patients. Intracranial hypertension (IC-HTN), a condition that can arise from traumatically induced mass effect, blood collections, stroke, or cerebral edema after surgery, requires immediate action if brain injury following compromised cerebral blood flow is to be avoided. Presently, the “gold standard” for monitoring ICP is a...

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Shear-mode Transcranial Imaging

Ultrasound brain imaging holds the potential to provide a low cost, and portable method for imaging blood flow, detecting hemorrhaging, and diagnosing certain brain disorders. However, distortion and low signal to noise ratios (SNR) caused by the skull have severely limited the use of existing clinical devices such as transcranial Doppler sonography (TCD) and transcranial color coded sonography (TCCS). Signal degradation is caused by reflection, refraction...

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Skull Thickness Prediction for Transcranial Ultrasound

The transmission of ultrasound (US) through the skull bone has been investigated for therapeutic and imaging applications. One of the primary obstacles to the effective application of transcranial US is bone-induced phase aberration due to geometric variations both within a subject and between subjects. The predictability of the transmitted US wavefield within the cranial vault is paramount to the development of clinically useful US-based procedures ranging from intracranial tumor ablation and drug...

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