Wave Propagation and Imaging in Biomedical Ultrasound

Organizers of this minisymposium are

Ultrasound (US) forms the basis of many investigative, diagnostic and even therapeutic technologies in biomedical and clinical applications including classical sonograms (density induced reflections), doppler US (flow imaging), high intensity focussed US – HIFU – used e.g. in cancer therapies. Furthermore, the frontiers are continuously being pushed due to undisputable advantages of US such as being harmless and relatively portable in comparison to for instance MR or X-ray CT. Examples of such novel applications are US tomography of breast or bone and various combination of US with other contrast inducing modalities: photo/thermo-acoustic tomography (optical/microwave), US/EIT (electro-impedance) or shear wave elastography.

In all investigative techniques, there is an underlying inverse problem, which solution more often than not requires repeated application of the forward operator. In biomedical US, the forward operator entails propagation of waves in a domain, including relatively high frequencies, in linear (acoustic or elastic) and possibly nonlinear regimes. As a consequence the forward problem is computationally expensive. Biomedical applications require solutions in either real time or limited time (order of minutes rather than hours). Thus, the solution to the inverse problem can benefit from tight integration of the forward and inverse solvers. This can be achieved by tailored, accelerated and approximate forward solvers effectively deployed within sophisticated inversion methods.

In this minisymposium we will invite experts across the field of biomedical ultrasound to discuss the application specific challenges and their solutions. Hosting this minisymposium at the Wave Phenomena conference we hope to effectively engage with a wider community working on problems featuring wave phenomena to achieve ideas migration and bidirectional stimulus to develop new approaches.