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Biomedical subjects

Gerald R Harris

Publications and source records attributed to Gerald R Harris.

6 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2005

Progress in medical ultrasound exposimetry.

Biomedical applications of ultrasound have experienced tremendous growth over the past 50 years. Early work in thermal therapy and surgery soon was followed by diagnostic imaging and Doppler. Because patient safety was an important issue from the beginning, the study of methods for measuring exposure levels, and their relationship to possible biological effects, paralleled the growth of the various therapeutic and diagnostic techniques. The diverse conditions of use have presented a range of exposure measurement challenges, and the sensors and techniques used to evaluate ultrasound fields have had to evolve as new or expanded clinical applications have emerged. In this paper some of the more notable of these developments are presented and discussed. Topics covered include devices and techniques, methods of calibration, progress in standardization, and current problem areas, including the effects of nonlinear propagation. Some early methods are described, but emphasis is given to more recent work applicable to present and future uses of ultrasound in medicine and biology.

Animals↗
PubMed2004

Interlaboratory evaluation of hydrophone sensitivity calibration from 0.1 to 2 MHz via time delay spectrometry.

Knowing the low-frequency response of hydrophones, down to 100 kHz at least, is important for accurate biomedical ultrasound measurements. However, current international standards do not extend below 500 kHz. Furthermore, commercial hydrophone sources typically do not supply sensitivity data below 1-2 MHz. Therefore, to help identify and validate practical calibration methods below 2 MHz, the authors have extended their previous individual efforts in an interlaboratory evaluation of sensitivity calibration using the swept-frequency technique, time delay spectrometry (TDS). Calibrations were performed for needle and membrane PVDF hydrophones using each laboratory's TDS system. Each site employed the same purpose-built broadband source transducers, comprising both plano-concave and biconcave 1-3 piezocomposite elements 4 cm in diameter, with maximum and minimum thicknesses of approximately 1.5 and 0.1 cm. Agreement between laboratories was within the estimated measurement precision of +/-0.6 dB. The results demonstrated that a TDS system employing such transducers constitutes a viable method for hydrophone calibrations in this frequency range.

Calibration↗
PubMed2004

1-3 piezoelectric composite transducers for swept-frequency calibration of hydrophones from 100 kHz to 2 MHz.

Rapid calibration of hydrophones used in biomedical ultrasound is possible with swept frequency techniques such as time delay spectrometry. However, calibrations below 2 MHz largely have been neglected because of insufficient transmitting transducer bandwidth, even though important medical applications operate in this range. To address this deficiency, several transmitting transducer designs were developed and tested, and two 1-3 piezoelectric composite designs were found to have the requisite bandwidth and uniformity of response. In one the element has a plane front face and spherically concave back face (plano-concave), and in the second both faces are concave, but with different radii of curvature (biconcave). The nonuniform thickness disperses the thickness resonance, and the composite structure suppresses radial-mode resonances. Also, the composite's lower acoustic impedance provides a more efficient match to water. The piezoelectric composite transducers were found to have transmitting pressure sensitivities superior to ceramic single-element and segmented designs having similar dimensions, and their responses were significantly more uniform (< 25 dB variation from 0.1-2 MHz, with < 1 dB fine structure variation), likely due to decreased contributions from radial modes.

Calibration↗
PubMed2003

IGBT-based kilovoltage pulsers for ultrasound measurement applications.

Two high-voltage pulser designs are presented that offer advantages in some ultrasound measurement applications, such as driving thick ultrasonic source transducers used for broadband measurements of attenuation or hydrophone frequency response and directivity. The pulsers use integrated gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs) as the switching devices, and in one design an output voltage pulse is produced that has a peak amplitude nearly twice that of the supply voltage. The pulsers are inexpensive and relatively easy to construct. The power supply need only provide the average current to charge the capacitors, as opposed to the much higher peak pulse current. With a 1200 V supply and a pulse repetition frequency of 200 Hz, the nondoubling and doubling pulsers provided peak voltages of greater than 1100 V and 2200 V, respectively, into loads ranging from 50 omega to 500 omega. For a 50 omega load, slewing rates of 38 V/ns and 23 V/ns were measured for the nondoubling and doubling pulsers, respectively. For a 500 omega load these values were 56 V/ns and 36 V/ns.

Journal Article↗
PubMed2002

Models and regulatory considerations for transient temperature rise during diagnostic ultrasound pulses.

A new diagnostic ultrasound (US) technique, sometimes called radiation force imaging, produces and detects motion in solid tissue or acoustic streaming in fluids via a high-intensity beam. Current models for estimating temperature rise during US exposure calculate the steady-state rise, using time-averaged acoustic output, as the worst case for safety consideration. Although valid for very short pulses, this analysis might not correspond to a worst-case scenario for the longer pulses or pulse bursts, up to hundreds of ms, used by this newer method. Models are presented to calculate the transient temperature rise from these pulse bursts for both the bone at focus and soft tissue situation. It is shown, based on accepted time-temperature dose criteria, that, for the bone at focus case and pulse lengths and intensities utilized by these methods, temperature may increase to levels that raise safety concerns. Also, regulatory aspects of this modality are analyzed in terms of the current FDA acoustic output limits for diagnostic US devices.

Bone and Bones↗