Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics Seminar: Michael Oelze

Description

Michael Oelze, a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, will give a talk entitled "Novel Techniques and Approaches in Diagnostic Ultrasound: What You Haven't Heard!" for the Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics.

Abstract:

Ultrasound is ubiquitous in clinical practice because it is safe, portable, inexpensive, and real time. However, the image quality of ultrasound is much less than MRI or X-ray CT because the contrast of ultrasound is typically low and ultrasonic images are rife with speckle. We have been developing different techniques to improve ultrasonic imaging by providing new sources of image contrast and improving spatial resolution. These new techniques include: development of quantitative ultrasound, ultrasound tomography with limited angle backscatter, novel super resolution beamforming techniques, and coding techniques for effectively improving transducer bandwidth. In addition to imaging, we have developed communication protocols using ultrasound as the communication channel and have demonstrated data rates capable of streaming high definition video. In this talk, I will discuss different applications of these ultrasonic imaging and communications techniques. Specifically, I will show how quantitative ultrasound approaches have been successful at classifying tissue state, monitoring focused ultrasound therapy, detecting early response of breast cancer to neoadjuvant chemotherapy, and the automatic detection of nerves in the imaging field. I will demonstrate how our super resolution technique can improve image quality for specific imaging tasks such as detecting bright specular scatterers. Finally, I will discuss the ability of ultrasound to act as the communication channel for implanted medical devices.