A5053452385- Ultrasound Imaging and Elastography
- Photoacoustic and Ultrasonic Imaging
- Ultrasonics and Acoustic Wave Propagation
- Cardiovascular Health and Disease Prevention
- Ultrasound and Hyperthermia Applications
- Flow Measurement and Analysis
- Advanced MRI Techniques and Applications
- Cerebrovascular and Carotid Artery Diseases
- Electrical and Bioimpedance Tomography
- Cardiovascular Function and Risk Factors
- Coronary Interventions and Diagnostics
- Ultrasound and Cavitation Phenomena
- Hemodynamic Monitoring and Therapy
- Non-Invasive Vital Sign Monitoring
- Cardiac Imaging and Diagnostics
- Microwave Imaging and Scattering Analysis
- Antenna Design and Optimization
- Acoustic Wave Resonator Technologies
- Structural Health Monitoring Techniques
- Ultrasound in Clinical Applications
- Pregnancy and preeclampsia studies
- Acute Ischemic Stroke Management
- Engineering Applied Research
- Fluid Dynamics and Mixing
- Elasticity and Material Modeling
University of Florence
2016-2025
Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Firenze
2018
Centre de Recherche en Acquisition et Traitement de l'Image pour la Santé
2006-2014
Defense Information School
2013
Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1
2006-2013
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
2006-2013
Yale University
2007-2008
University of Milano-Bicocca
2004-2007
Institut National des Sciences Appliquées de Lyon
2006
Inserm
2006
The effects of simulated microgravity on the static and dynamic properties large arteries are still mostly unknown. present study evaluated, using an integrated vascular approach, changes in structure function common carotid femoral (CCA CFA) after prolonged head-down tilt bed rest (HDTBR). Ten healthy men were enrolled a 5-week HDTBR endorsed by Italian Space Agency (ASI). Arterial geometry, flow, stiffness, shear rate evaluated ultrasound. Local pulse pressure wave reflection studied...
The experimental test of novel ultrasound (US) investigation methods can be made difficult by the lack flexibility commercial US machines. In best options, these only provide beamformed radiofrequency or demodulated echo-signals for acquisition an external PC. More is achieved in high-level research platforms, but are typically characterized high cost and large size. This paper presents a powerful portable system, specifically developed purposes. system design has been based on integrated...
Open scanners offer an increasing support to the ultrasound researchers who are involved in experimental test of novel methods. Each system presents specific performance terms number channels, flexibility, processing power, data storage capability, and overall dimensions. This paper reports design criteria hardware/software implementation details a new 256-channel advanced open platform. is organized modular architecture, including multiple front-end boards, interconnected by high-speed (80...
The current high interest in 3-D ultrasound imaging is pushing the development of 2-D probes with a challenging number active elements. most popular approach to limit this sparse array technique, which designs layout by means complex optimization algorithms. These algorithms are typically constrained few steering conditions, and, as such, cannot guarantee uniform side-lobe performance at all angles. may be improved ungridded extensions but result achieved expense further complication...
The availability of programmable and reconfigurable ultrasound (US) research platforms may have a considerable impact on the advancement systems technology; indeed, they allow novel transmission strategies or challenging processing methods to be tested experimentally refined. In this paper, ULtrasound Advanced Open Platform (ULA-OP), recently developed in our University laboratory, is shown flexible tool that can easily adapted wide range applications. Five nonstandard working modalities are...
Open platform (OP) ultrasound systems are aimed primarily at the research community. They have been forefront of development synthetic aperture, plane wave, shear wave elastography, and vector flow imaging. Such platforms driven by a need for broad flexibility parameters that normally preset or fixed within clinical scanners. OP scanners defined to three key features including customization transmit waveform, access prebeamformed receive data, ability implement real-time In this paper,...
High frame rate (HFR) echocardiography may be of benefit for functional analysis the heart. In current clinical equipment, HFR is obtained using multi-line acquisition (MLA) which typically requires broadening transmit beams. As this result in a significant degradation spatial resolution and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), capacity MLA to obtain high quality images remains limited. an alternative, we have demonstrated by computer simulation that simultaneously transmitting multiple focused...
Three-dimensional imaging with 2-D matrix probes is one of the most exciting recent ultrasound innovations. Unfortunately, number elements a probe often very high, and reducing this deteriorates beam properties. In paper, we propose new sparse-array design technique irregular element positioning, which significantly reduces active as well grating-lobe level. particular, introduce cost function for optimizing weighting coefficients annealing-based algorithm to compute lowest solutions....
Multi-Line Transmission (MLT) was recently demonstrated as a valuable tool to increase the frame rate of ultrasound images. In this approach, multiple beams that are simultaneously transmitted may determine cross-talk artifacts typically reduced, although not eliminated, by use Tukey apodization on both transmission and reception apertures, which unfortunately worsens image lateral resolution. paper we investigate combination, related performance, Filtered-Delay Multiply And Sum (F-DMAS)...
High-frame-rate 3-D ultrasound imaging technology combined with super-resolution processing method can visualize microvascular structures by overcoming the diffraction-limited resolution in every spatial direction. However, using a full 2-D array requires system large number of independent channels, design which might be impractical due to high cost, complexity, and volume data produced. In this study, sparse was designed fabricated 512 elements chosen from density-tapered spiral layout....
Several ultrasound (US) methods have been recently proposed to produce 2-D velocity vector fields with high temporal and spatial resolution. However, the real-time implementation in US scanners is heavily hampered by calculation power required. In this work, we report a Doppler imaging method which has integrated an open research system. The approach exploits plane waves transmitted from two sub-arrays of linear probe estimate vectors 512 sample volumes aligned along axis. tested for...
High frame rate (HFR) imaging methods based on the transmission of defocused or plane waves rather than focused beams are increasingly popular. However, production HFR images poses severe requirements both in and reception sections ultrasound scanners. In particular, major technical difficulties arise if must be continuously produced real-time, i.e., without any acquisition interruption nor loss data. This paper presents implementation real-time HFR-compounded application ULA-OP 256 research...
Three dimensional ultrasound (3-D US) imaging methods based on 2-D array probes are increasingly investigated. However, the experimental test of new 3-D US approaches is contrasted by need controlling very large numbers probe elements. Although this problem may be overcome use sparse arrays, just a few results have so far corroborated validity approach. In paper, we experimentally compare performance fully wired 1024-element (32 × 32) array, assumed as reference, to that 256-element random...
Full matrix arrays are excellent tools for 3-D ultrasound imaging, but the required number of active elements is too high to be individually controlled by an equal scanner channels. The significantly reduced sparse array techniques, position remaining must carefully optimized. This issue faced here introducing novel energy functions in simulated annealing (SA) algorithm. At each iteration step optimization process, one element freely translated and associated radiated pattern simulated. To...
Background: Peripheral artery disease (PAD) affects >200 million people worldwide and is associated with high mortality morbidity. We sought to identify genomic variants PAD overall in the contexts of diabetes smoking status. Methods: identified genetic then meta-analyzed published summary statistics from Million Veterans Program UK Biobank replicate their findings. Next, we ran stratified genome-wide association analysis ever smokers, never individuals diabetes, no history corresponding...
Transverse oscillation (TO) methods introduce oscillations in the pulse–echo field (PEF) along direction transverse to ultrasound propagation direction. This may be exploited extend flow investigations toward multidimensional estimates. In this paper, TOs are coupled with transmission of plane waves (PWs) reconstruct high-framerate RF images bidirectional field. Such then processed by a 2-D phase-based displacement estimator produce vector maps at thousands frames per second. First,...
Conventional ultrasound Doppler techniques estimate the blood velocity exclusively in axial direction to produce sonograms and color flow maps needed for diagnosis of cardiovascular diseases. In this paper, a novel method bi-dimensional 2-D vectors is proposed. The region interest (ROI) illuminated by plane waves transmitted at pulse repetition frequency (PRF) fixed direction. For each wave, backscattered echoes are recombined offline radio-frequency image ROI. local phase shifts between...
three-dimensional ultrasound imaging is based on two-dimensional (2-D) arrays controlled by application-specific integrated circuits, which implement the so-called microbeamformer (μB) to reduce channel count. μBs are designed for line-by-line scan sequences focused beams (FBs), providing low frame rates. On other hand, high rate (HFR) techniques using defocused increasingly attractive reconstructing detailed tissue and blood motion information. Although an increasing number of researchers...
The blood–brain barrier (BBB) poses a significant challenge to drug delivery the brain. A promising approach involves low-frequency, low-intensity pulsed ultrasound (US) waves combined with intravenously injected microbubbles (MB) temporarily and non-invasively open BBB. However, current technologies cannot easily integrate this procedure US imaging. Passive cavitation detection, tracing harmonic emissions of MB during sonication, has been preferred method for real-time monitoring...