Perspectives in clinical uses of high-intensity focused ultrasound

Focused ultrasound holds promise in a large number of therapeutic applications. It has long been known that high intensity focused ultrasound can kill tissue through coagulative necrosis. However, it is only in recent years that practical clinical applications are becoming possible, with the development of high power ultrasound phased arrays and noninvasive monitoring methods. These technologies, combined with more sophisticated treatment planning methods allow noninvasive focusing in areas such as the brain, that were once thought to be unreachable. Meanwhile, exciting investigations are underway in microbubble-enhanced heating which could significantly reduce treatment times. These developments have promoted an increase in the number of potential applications by providing valuable new tools for medical research. This paper provides an overview of the scientific and engineering advances that are allowing the growth in clinical focused ultrasound applications. It also discusses some of these prospective applications, including the treatment of brain disorders and targeted drug delivery.     

Sonochemistry and sonoprocessing: the link,the trends and (probably) the future

Traditionally the community of scientists involved with ultrasound has been divided broadly into those who use it as a measurement device with no effect on the medium (high frequency low power ultrasound e.g. non-destructive testing) and those who use it to produce physical or chemical effects in a medium (higher power low frequency ultrasound e.g. sonochemistry). Divisions also exist within the broad spectrum of those involved with the latter. In the early days of sonochemistry this did not prove to be a major problem, the subject was new and the field was expanding within the chemistry community. However at a point some years ago Jean-Louis Luche made the very important observation that sonochemistry applications could be subdivided into reactions which were the result of "true" and "false" effects [Synthetic Organic Chemistry by J.-L. Luche, 1998, p. 376]. Essentially these terms referred to real chemical effects induced by cavitation and those effects that could be mainly ascribed to the mechanical impact of bubble collapse. These mechanical effects have not held the interest of synthetic chemists as much as the so-called true ones but nevertheless they are certainly important in areas such as processing. In this paper I will attempt to show that there are links that can be made across many of the ultrasound "disciplines" and that these links can only serve to strengthen research in the general area of power ultrasound. If research on power ultrasound is strong then research into "pure" sonochemistry will also flourish and "false" sonochemistry will be born again as a significant research area.     

Multi-colour microscopic interferometry for optical metrology and imaging applications

Interferometry has been widely used for optical metrology and imaging applications because of their precision, reliability, and versatility. Although single-wavelength interferometery can provide high sensitivity and resolution, it has several drawbacks, namely, it fails to quantify large-discontinuities, large-deformations, and shape of unpolished surfaces. Multiple-wavelength techniques have been successfully used to overcome the drawbacks associated with single wavelength analysis. The use of colour CCD camera allows simultaneous acquisition of multiple interferograms. The advances in colour CCD cameras and image processing techniques have made the multi-colour interferometry a faster, simpler, and cost-effective tool for industrial applications. This article reviews the recent advances in multi-colour interferometric techniques and their demanding applications for characterization of micro-systems, non-destructive testing, and bio-imaging applications.     

Recent advances in exchange bias of layered magnetic FM/AFM systems

The exchange bias(EB) has been investigated in magnetic materials with the ferromagnetic(FM)/antiferromagnetic(AFM) contacting interfaces for more than half a century.To date,the significant progress has been made in the layered magnetic FM/AFM thin film systems.EB mechanisms have shown substantive research advances.Here some of the new advances are introduced and discussed with the emphasis on the influence of AFM layer,the interlayer EB coupling across nonmagnetic spacer,and the interlayer coupling across AFM layer,as well as EB related to multiferrioc materials and electrical control.     

Ultrasonics in food processing

In recent years, the physical and chemical effects of ultrasound in liquid and solid media have been extensively used in food processing applications. Harnessing the physical forces generated by ultrasound, in the absence and presence of cavitation, for specific food processing applications such as emulsification, filtration, tenderisation and functionality modification have been highlighted. While some applications, such as filtration and emulsification are "mature" industrial processes, other applications, such as functionality modification, are still in their early stages of development. However, various investigations discussed suggest that ultrasonic processing of food and dairy ingredients is a potential and viable technology that will be used by many food industries in the near future.     

The transfer of ultrasonic energy in the diffraction technique for crack sizing

During the past five years a programme of work has been carried out at the Harwell NDT Centre concerned with the use of scattered or diffracted ultrasound in the sizing of defects. The progress made in this direction and some of the possible lines of further research have been indicated in other papers.^1–3 This diffraction technique has been evaluated on a number of fatigue cracked specimens and it has been found that accuracies in crack sizing consistently better than $\text{1}\text{2}$ mm have been achieved. The technique is thus thought to be on the verge of application to practical ndt problems.The basis of the sizing technique is the recognition and subsequent timing of various discrete ultrasonic pulses, as will be outlined later. The scope of the technique thus depends on these signals remaining both well separated and large enough to be resolved in a wide range of examination geometries. The purpose of the present paper is to consider the mechanisms by which two of the ultrasonic pulses of importance in the diffraction technique are produced. In this connection the current theoretical situation is reviewed and this is compared, where appropriate, with experimental measurements taken during the period of this work.     

纳米载体负载声敏剂的研究进展和挑战

声动力治疗是将低频超声与声敏剂相结合的非侵入性肿瘤治疗方法,由于其副作用小、治疗深度深等优点,受到科学家们的重视。有机声敏剂作为初代声敏剂已经被研究多年,但是其水溶性差、无法在肿瘤部位大量聚集等缺陷阻碍了其声动力应用。快速发展的纳米技术为许多问题的解决提供了新的思路,尤其利用纳米载体负载声敏剂,可以解决有机声敏剂水溶性差、容易被提前释放等问题,实现药物靶向作用,为声动力治疗与其他疗法结合提供平台,进一步发挥声动力治疗疗效。因此,该文总结了纳米载体负载有机声敏剂用于声动力治疗的相关研究,着重介绍纳米载体在声动力治疗中的研究进展及相关机理,指出现存问题,最终希望可以总结出用于声动力治疗的纳米载体的共性,为今后研究提供帮助。     

Quo vadis elasticity imaging?

In the past decade, an important field that has emerged as complementary to ultrasonic imaging is that of elasticity imaging. The term encompasses a variety of techniques that can depict a mechanical response or property of tissues. In ultrasound, its premise is built on two important facts: (a) that significant differences between mechanical properties of several tissue components exist and (b) that the information contained in the coherent scattering, or speckle, is sufficient to depict these differences following an external or internal mechanical stimulus. Parameters, such as velocity of vibration, displacement, strain, strain rate, velocity of wave propagation and elastic modulus, have all been demonstrated feasible in their estimation and have resulted in the accurate depiction of stiffer tissue masses, such as tumors, high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) lesions and atherosclerotic plaques. More recently, through the development of ultrafast algorithms tailored to suitable hardware as well as the familiarity of the physician with the sensitivity of the methods used, one elasticity imaging technique in particular, elastography, has been shown applicable in a typical clinical ultrasound setting. In other words, elastograms can currently be obtained at quasi real-time (approximately at a frame rate of 8 frames/s) and with the use of a hand-held transducer (as opposed to the previously used frame-suspended setup) during and simultaneously with an ultrasound exam of, e.g., the breast or the prostate. The higher frame rate available with certain clinical ultrasound scanners has also resulted in the successful application of elasticity imaging techniques on the myocardium and monitoring its deformation over several cardiac cycles for the detection of ischemic regions. As a result, elasticity imaging with its ever increasing number of applications and demonstrated applicability in a typical, clinical ultrasound setting promises to make an important contribution to the ultrasound practice as we know it.     

Probabilistic Models with Deep Neural Networks

Recent advances in statistical inference have significantly expanded the toolbox of probabilistic modeling. Historically, probabilistic modeling has been constrained to very restricted model classes, where exact or approximate probabilistic inference is feasible. However, developments in variational inference, a general form of approximate probabilistic inference that originated in statistical physics, have enabled probabilistic modeling to overcome these limitations: (i) Approximate probabilistic inference is now possible over a broad class of probabilistic models containing a large number of parameters, and (ii) scalable inference methods based on stochastic gradient descent and distributed computing engines allow probabilistic modeling to be applied to massive data sets. One important practical consequence of these advances is the possibility to include deep neural networks within probabilistic models, thereby capturing complex non-linear stochastic relationships between the random variables. These advances, in conjunction with the release of novel probabilistic modeling toolboxes, have greatly expanded the scope of applications of probabilistic models, and allowed the models to take advantage of the recent strides made by the deep learning community. In this paper, we provide an overview of the main concepts, methods, and tools needed to use deep neural networks within a probabilistic modeling framework.     

固体核磁共振谱学研究层状双氢氧化物

层状双氢氧化物(LDHs)作为一类非常重要的无机超分子材料,已经被广泛应用于催化、离子交换、生命科学等众多领域．固体核磁共振谱学是研究层状双氢氧化
物局域结构和动态特征的一种强有力手段,提供了非常丰富的信息．特别是最近,借助固体核磁共振在探索层状双氢氧化物的结构方面取得了非常重要的进展（如：阳离子的有序性信息）．该文主要介绍了最近40 年来固体核磁共振研究层状双氢氧化物方面的重要进展．     

磁共振波谱及成像技术在纳米尺度物质生物效应研究中的应用

纳米尺度物质的生物效应研究是近年来在纳米科技发展过程中派生出来的一个崭新的、发展很快的且多学科高度交叉的领域，需要把纳米科学、物理学、化学以及生物医学等多学科的研究手段结合起来，进行综合研究．核磁共振波谱与成像，作为一种原位、无损、动态、实时、多信息的检测手段，在此领域的研究中将发挥不可或缺的重要作用．文章分3个方面简要介绍核磁共振波谱与成像技术在纳米尺度物质生物效应研究中的应用：（1）纳米尺度物质在生物组织及个体内的检测与分析；（2）纳米尺度物质与生物大分子相互作用的核磁共振波谱研究；（3）纳米尺度物质生物效应的核磁共振代谢组学研究．     

Ultrasound technology for food fermentation applications

Fermentation processes involve the participation of enzymes and organic catalysts, generated by range of microorganisms to produce chemical transformations. Ultrasound can be used in such processes to either monitor the progress of fermentation or to influence its progress. High frequency ultrasound (>2 MHz) has been extensively reported as a tool for the measurement of the changes in chemical composition during fermentation providing real time information on reaction progress. Low frequency ultrasound (20–50 kHz) can influence the course of fermentation by improving mass transfer and cell permeability leading to improved process efficiency and production rates. It can also be used to eliminate micro-organisms which might otherwise hinder the process. This review summarises key applications of high and low frequency ultrasound in food fermentation applications.     

Metal‐nanoparticle plasmonics

The rapid emergence of nanoplasmonics as a novel technology has been driven by recent progress in the fabrication, characterization, and understanding of metal‐nanoparticle systems. In this review, we highlight some of the key advances in each of these areas. We emphasize the basic physical understanding and experimental techniques that will enable a new generation of applications in nano‐optics.     

Noisy intermediate-scale quantum computers

Quantum computers have made extraordinary progress over the past decade, and significant milestones have been achieved along the path of pursuing universal fault-tolerant quantum computers. Quantum advantage, the tipping point heralding the quantum era, has been accomplished along with several waves of breakthroughs. Quantum hardware has become more integrated and architectural compared to its toddler days. The controlling precision of various physical systems is pushed beyond the fault-tolerant threshold. Meanwhile, quantum computation research has established a new norm by embracing industrialization and commercialization. The joint power of governments, private investors, and tech companies has significantly shaped a new vibrant environment that accelerates the development of this field, now at the beginning of the noisy intermediate-scale quantum era. Here, we first discuss the progress achieved in the field of quantum computation by reviewing the most important algorithms and advances in the most promising technical routes, and then summarizing the next-stage challenges. Furthermore, we illustrate our confidence that solid foundations have been built for the fault-tolerant quantum computer and our optimism that the emergence of quantum killer applications essential for human society shall happen in the future.     

Recent advances on π-conjugated polymers as active elements in high performance organic field-effect transistors

As high-performance organic semiconductors, π-conjugated polymers have attracted much attention due to their charming advantages including low-cost, solution processability, mechanical flexibility, and tunable optoelectronic properties. During the past several decades, the great advances have been made in polymers-based OFETs with p-type, n-type or even ambipolar characterics. Through chemical modification and alignment optimization, lots of conjugated polymers exhibited superior mobilities, and some mobilities are even larger than 10 cm²·V⁻¹·s⁻¹ in OFETs, which makes them very promising for the applications in organic electronic devices. This review describes the recent progress of the high performance polymers used in OFETs from the aspects of molecular design and assembly strategy. Furthermore, the current challenges and outlook in the design and development of conjugated polymers are also mentioned.     

束晕-混沌的复杂性理论与控制方法及其应用前景

本文系统论述涉及强流加速器等强流离子束装置中产生的束晕-混沌的复杂性理论与控制方法及其应用前景。强流离子束在核材料生产与增殖、洁净核能、放射性废物嬗变、放射性药物生产、重离子聚变、高能物理、核科学与工程、国防与民用工业和医疗等许多方面都有极其重要的应用潜力和诱人的发展前景。尤其是，近年来强流加速器驱动的放射性洁净核能系统是国内外关注的热门课题，因为它比常规核电更安全、更干净、更便宜。但是，强流离子束形成的束晕-混沌的复杂性现象已引起了国内外广泛关注，需要加以抑制、控制和消除这类现象，解决这一难题已经成为强流离子束应用中的关键问题之一。目前不仅必须深入研究这类束晕-混沌的复杂特性及其产生的物理机制，而且需要研究如何实现对束晕-混沌的有效控制，并寻求和发展其新理论、新方法和新技术。这就向强流离子束物理和非线性-复杂性科学及其技术提出了一系列极富挑战性的新课题。本文结合国内外的研究概况，根据我们多年来的研究成果，特别是我们首创性地提出了一些束晕-混沌的有效控制方法，它们包括：非线性反馈控制法，小波反馈控制法，变结构控制法，延迟反馈控制法，参数自适应控制法等，进行重点的介绍。对上述课题当前的主要进展及相关问题进行系统的总结和比较全面综述的评论。最后，指出该领域今后的研究方向，以推动这个崭新领域的深入研究和应用发展。     

Physical mechanisms of the therapeutic effect of ultrasound (a review)

Therapeutic ultrasound is an emerging field with many medical applications. High intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) provides the ability to localize the deposition of acoustic energy within the body, which can cause tissue necrosis and hemostasis. Similarly, shock waves from a lithotripter penetrate the body to comminute kidney stones, and transcutaneous ultrasound enhances the transport of chemotherapy agents. New medical applications have required advances in transducer design and advances in numerical and experimental studies of the interaction of sound with biological tissues and fluids. The primary physical mechanism in HIFU is the conversion of acoustic energy into heat, which is often enhanced by nonlinear acoustic propagation and nonlinear scattering from bubbles. Other mechanical effects from ultrasound appear to stimulate an immune response, and bubble dynamics play an important role in lithotripsy and ultrasound-enhanced drug delivery. A dramatic shift to understand and exploit these nonlinear and mechanical mechanisms has occurred over the last few years. Specific challenges remain, such as treatment protocol planning and real-time treatment monitoring. An improved understanding of the physical mechanisms is essential to meet these challenges and to further advance therapeutic ultrasound.     

Research interface on a programmable ultrasound scanner

Motivation

Commercial ultrasound machines in the past did not provide the ultrasound researchers access to raw ultrasound data. Lack of this ability has impeded evaluation and clinical testing of novel ultrasound algorithms and applications.

Objectives

Recently, we developed a flexible ultrasound back-end where all the processing for the conventional ultrasound modes, such as B, M, color flow and spectral Doppler, was performed in software. The back-end has been incorporated into a commercial ultrasound machine, the Hitachi HiVision 5500. The goal of this work is to develop an ultrasound research interface on the back-end for acquiring raw ultrasound data from the machine.

Methods

The research interface has been designed as a software module on the ultrasound back-end. To increase the amount of raw ultrasound data that can be spooled in the limited memory available on the back-end, we have developed a method that can losslessly compress the ultrasound data in real time.

Results and discussion

The raw ultrasound data could be obtained in any conventional ultrasound mode, including duplex and triplex modes. Furthermore, use of the research interface does not decrease the frame rate or otherwise affect the clinical usability of the machine. The lossless compression of the ultrasound data in real time can increase the amount of data spooled by ∼2.3 times, thus allowing more than 6 s of raw ultrasound data to be acquired in all the modes. The interface has been used not only for early testing of new ideas with in vitro data from phantoms, but also for acquiring in vivo data for fine-tuning ultrasound applications and conducting clinical studies. We present several examples of how newer ultrasound applications, such as elastography, vibration imaging and 3D imaging, have benefited from this research interface. Since the research interface is entirely implemented in software, it can be deployed on existing HiVision 5500 ultrasound machines and may be easily upgraded in the future.

Conclusions

The developed research interface can aid researchers in the rapid testing and clinical evaluation of new ultrasound algorithms and applications. Additionally, we believe that our approach would be applicable to designing research interfaces on other ultrasound machines.     

束晕-混沌的复杂性理论与控制方法及其应用前景

本文系统论述涉及强流加速器等强流离子束装置中产生的束晕 混沌的复杂性理论与控制方法及其应用前景。强流离子束在核材料生产与增殖、洁净核能、放射性废物嬗变、放射性药物生产、重离子聚变、高能物理、核科学与工程、国防与民用工业和医疗等许多方面都有极其重要的应用潜力和诱人的发展前景。尤其是,近年来强流加速器驱动的放射性洁净核能系统是国内外关注的热门课题,因为它比常规核电更安全、更干净、更便宜。但是,强流离子束形成的束晕 混沌的复杂性现象已引起了国内外广泛关注,需要加以抑制、控制和消除这类现象,解决这一难题已经成为强流离子束应用中的关键问题之一。目前不仅必须深入研究这类束晕 混沌的复杂特性及其产生的物理机制,而且需要研究如何实现对束晕 混沌的有效控制,并寻求和发展其新理论、新方法和新技术。这就向强流离子束物理和非线性-复杂性科学及其技术提出了一系列极富挑战性的新课题。本文结合国内外的研究概况,根据我们多年来的研究成果,特别是我们首创性地提出了一些束晕 混沌的有效控制方法,它们包括:非线性反馈控制 法,小波反馈控制法,变结构控制法,延迟反馈控制法,参数自适应控制法等,进行重点的介绍。对上述课题当前的主要进展及相关问题进行系统的总结和比较全面综述的评论。最后 ,指出该领域今后的研究方向 ,以推动这个崭新领域的深入研究和应用发展。     

Drive to miniaturization: integrated optical networks on mobile platforms

With rapid growth of the Internet, bandwidth demand for data traffic is continuing to explode. In addition, emerging and future applications are becoming more and more network centric. With the proliferation of data communication platforms and data-intensive applications (e.g. cloud computing), high-bandwidth materials such as video clips dominating the Internet, and social networking tools, a networking technology is very desirable which can scale the Internet’s capability (particularly its bandwidth) by two to three orders of magnitude. As the limits of Moore’s law are approached, optical mesh networks based on wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) have the ability to satisfy the large- and scalable-bandwidth requirements of our future backbone telecommunication networks. In addition, this trend is also affecting other special-purpose systems in applications such as mobile platforms, automobiles, aircraft, ships, tanks, and micro unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) which are becoming independent systems roaming the sky while sensing data, processing, making decisions, and even communicating and networking with other heterogeneous systems. Recently, WDM optical technologies have seen advances in its transmission speeds, switching technologies, routing protocols, and control systems. Such advances have made WDM optical technology an appealing choice for the design of future Internet architectures. Along these lines, scientists across the entire spectrum of the network architectures from physical layer to applications have been working on developing devices and communication protocols which can take full advantage of the rapid advances in WDM technology. Nevertheless, the focus has always been on large-scale telecommunication networks that span hundreds and even thousands of miles. Given these advances, we investigate the vision and applicability of integrating the traditionally large-scale WDM optical networks into miniaturized mobile platforms such as UAVs. We explain the benefits of WDM optical technology for these applications. We also describe some of the limitations of WDM optical networks as the size of a vehicle gets smaller, such as in micro-UAVs, and study the miniaturization and communication system limitations in such environments.