MRes Bioengineering research project (new)
Title of the project:
Ultrafast ultrasound imaging of heart
Supervisor 1: Dr. Mengxing Tang
Department: Bioengineering
Imperial College campus: SK
email: mengxing.tang@ic.ac.uk
Supervisor 2: (if applicable)
Department:
Imperial College campus:
email:
Project Description: (up to 200 words)
Ultrasound imaging is one of the most frequently used clinical imaging modalities and is the first line
imaging technique for a wide range of diseases especially cardiac applications. Comparing with other
existing clinical imaging modalities ultrasound imaging is non-ionizing, affordable and accessible, and
works in real time.
A recent advance in medical ultrasound is the development of ultrafast ultrasound imaging systems.
The technique offers super high frame rates (thousands of frames per second) and has potential to
revolutionise the field of both clinical and pre-clinical ultrasound. The potential application of the
ultrafast ultrasound in cardiac imaging offers exciting new opportunities in tracking fast wall motion
and rapid flow field within the chambers, and potentially for dynamic imaging of cardiac fibre
orientation. Conventional ultrasound is not fast enough to track the fast wall motion and flow. For
cardiac fibre orientation, while it has been observed that fibres at different orientations can
generate different ultrasound echoes, conventional ultrasound uses focused waves which reduced
the sensitivity of the echoes to fibre orientation. Non-focused ultrasound wave front steered at
different directions used in ultrafast ultrasound can potentially offer significantly higher sensitivity in
detecting fibre orientation.
This project will explore these opportunities opened up by applying ultrafast ultrasound to cardiac
imaging and address the challenges in the large methodology gap between ultrafast platforms
available and the cardiac applications. Especially the focus will be on imaging heart fibre orientation
and on myocardium perfusion.
Key techniques: (please include only the names of techniques, not a description)
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Ultrasound pulse-echo imaging and signal processing
Design of experiments, data acquisition and data analysis
References: (up to 3 references related to the project)
Tanter, M.; Fink, M., "Ultrafast imaging in biomedical ultrasound," Ultrasonics,
Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control, IEEE Transactions on , vol.61, no.1, pp.102,119,
January 2014