Biomedical subjects

Mathias Fink

Publications and source records attributed to Mathias Fink.

9 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2003

Field fluctuation spectroscopy in a reverberant cavity with moving scatterers.

We report a study of transient ultrasonic waves inside a reverberant cavity containing moving scatterers. We show that the elastic mean free path and the dynamics of the scatterers govern the evolution of the autocorrelation of acoustic wave field. A parallel is established between these results and a closely related technique, diffusing acoustic wave spectroscopy. Excellent agreement is found between experiment and theory for a moving stainless steel ball in a water tank, thereby elucidating the underlying physics, and a potential application, fish monitoring inside aquariums, is demonstrated.

Journal Article↗

PubMed2003

Taking advantage of multiple scattering to communicate with time-reversal antennas.

We present an experimental demonstration showing that, contrary to first intuition, the more scattering a mesoscopic medium is, the more information can be conveyed through it. We used a multiple input-multiple output configuration: a multichannel ultrasonic time-reversal antenna is used to transmit random series of bits simultaneously to different receivers which were only a few wavelengths apart. Whereas the transmission is free of error when multiple scattering occurs in the propagation medium, the error rate is huge in a homogeneous medium.

Journal Article↗

PubMed2003

Green's function estimation using secondary sources in a shallow water environment.

This work provides a new way to measure the Green's function between two points in an acoustic channel without emitting a pulse by any of the two points. The Green's function between A and B is obtained from a set of secondary sources in the guide by averaging either the correlation or the convolution of the signals received in A and B. A theoretical approach based on mode propagation in a monochromatic regime is presented. Results are then extended to the time domain. Estimation of the Green's function is performed numerically in a range-independent and a range-dependent environment. Application to discreet acoustic communications is discussed.

Journal Article↗

PubMed2003

Sound focusing in rooms: the time-reversal approach.

New perspectives in audible range acoustics, such as virtual sound space creation and active noise control, rely on the ability of the rendering system to recreate precisely a desired sound field. This ability to control sound in a given volume of a room is directly linked to the capacity to focus acoustical energy both in space and time. However, sound focusing in rooms remains a complicated problem, essentially because of the multiple reflections on obstacles and walls occurring during propagation. In this paper, the technique of time-reversal focusing, well known in ultrasound, is experimentally applied to audible range acoustics. Compared to classical focusing techniques such as delay law focusing, time reversal appears to considerably improve quality of both temporal and spatial focusing. This so-called super-resolution phenomenon is due to the ability of time reversal to take into account all of the different sound paths between the emitting antenna and the focal point, thus creating an adaptive spatial and temporal matched filter for the considered propagation medium. Experiments emphasize the strong robustness of time-reversal focusing towards small modifications in the medium, such as people in motion or temperature variations. Sound focusing through walls using the time-reversal approach is also experimentally demonstrated.

Acoustics↗

PubMed2002

Boosting sonoluminescence with a high-intensity ultrasonic pulse focused on the bubble by an adaptive array.

Single-bubble sonoluminescence is characterized by a great concentration of energy during the collapse of a gas bubble, which leads to the generation of photons from low-frequency ultrasound. The narrow stability domain of sonoluminescence has limited previous attempts to reinforce this inertial confinement in order to generate photons of higher energy or to ignite a nuclear fusion reaction. We present a new experimental approach where an ultrasonic pulse of high frequency is adaptively focused on the bubble during the collapse. Using an array of eight transmitters, a pressure pulse of 0.7 MPa doubles the flash intensity; this technique can easily be extended to higher pressure.

Journal Article↗

PubMed2002

Time reversal versus phase conjugation in a multiple scattering environment.

We present experimental results on the reversibility of ultrasound in a multiple scattering medium. An ultrasonic pulsed wave is transmitted from a point source to a 128-element receiving array through 2D samples with various thickness. The samples consist of random collections of parallel steel rods immersed in water. The scattered waves are recorded, time reversed and sent back into the medium. The time-reversed waves are converging back to their source and the quality of spatial and temporal focusing on the source is related to the second-order moments of the scattered wave (correlation) in time and in space. Experimental results show that it is possible to obtain a robust estimation of the correlations on a single realisation of disorder, taking advantage of the wide frequency bandwidth. The spatial resolution of the system is only limited by the correlation length of the scattered field, and no longer by diffraction. Moreover, successful time-reversal focusing using a single element instead of an array is possible, whereas a one-channel monochromatic phase conjugation fails. The efficiency of broad-band time reversal compared to monochromatic phase conjugation lies in the number of 'information grains' in the frequency bandwidth.

Journal Article↗

PubMed2002

Shear modulus imaging with 2-D transient elastography.

In previous works, we have shown that time-resolved 2-D transient elastography is a promising technique for characterizing the elasticity of soft tissues. It involves the measurement of the displacements induced by the propagation of low frequency (LF) pulsed shear waves in biological tissues. In this paper, we present a novel apparatus that contains a LF vibrating device surrounding a linear array of 128 ultrasonic transducers that performs ultrafast ultrasonic imaging (up to 10,000 frames/s) and that is able to follow in real time the propagation of a LF shear wave in the human body. The vibrating device is made of two rods, fixed to electromagnetic vibrators, that produce in the ultrasonic image area a large amplitude shear wave. The geometry has been chosen both to enhance the sensitivity and to create a quasi linear shear wave front in the imaging plane. An inversion algorithm is used to recover the shear modulus map from the spatio-temporal data, and the first experimental results obtained from tissue-equivalent materials are presented.

Algorithms↗

PubMed2002

Shear elasticity probe for soft tissues with 1-D transient elastography.

Important tissue parameters such as elasticity can be deduced from the study of the propagation of low frequency shear waves. A new method for measuring the shear velocity in soft tissues is presented in this paper. Unlike conventional transient elastography, in which the ultrasonic transducer and the low frequency vibrator are two separated parts, the new method relies on a probe that associates the vibrator and the transducer, which is built on the axis of the vibrator. This setup is easy to use. The low frequency shear wave is driven by the transducer itself that acts as a piston while it is used in pulse echo mode to acquire ultrasonic lines. The results obtained with the new method are in good agreement with those obtained with the conventional one.

Algorithms↗

PubMed2002

Ultrafast compound imaging for 2-D motion vector estimation: application to transient elastography.

This paper describes a new technique for two-dimensional (2-D) imaging of the motion vector at a very high frame rate with ultrasound. Its potential is experimentally demonstrated for transient elastography. But, beyond this application, it also could be promising for color flow and reflectivity imaging. To date, only axial displacements induced in human tissues by low-frequency vibrators were measured during transient elastography. The proposed technique allows us to follow both axial and lateral displacements during the shear wave propagation and thus should improve Young's modulus image reconstruction. The process is a combination of several ideas well-known in ultrasonic imaging: ultra-fast imaging, multisynthetic aperture beamforming, 1-D speckle tracking, and compound imaging. Classical beamforming in the transmit mode is replaced here by a single plane wave insonification increasing the frame rate by at least a factor of 128. The beamforming is achieved only in the receive mode on two independent subapertures. Comparison of successive frames by a classical 1-D speckle tracking algorithm allows estimation of displacements along two different directions linked to the subapertures beams. The variance of the estimates is finally improved by tilting the emitting plane wave at each insonification, thus allowing reception of successive decorrelated speckle patterns.

Algorithms↗