Second harmonic magnetoacoustic responses of magnetic nanoparticles in magnetoacoustic tomography with magnetic induction

Due to the unique magnetic, mechanical and thermal properties, magnetic nanoparticles(MNPs) have comprehensive applications as the contrast and therapeutic agents in biomedical imaging and magnetic hyperthermia. The linear and nonlinear magnetoacoustic responses determined by the magnetic properties of MNPs have attracted more and more attention in biomedical engineering. By considering the relaxation time of MNPs, we derive the formulae of second harmonic magnetoacoustic responses(2H-MARs) for a cylindrical MNP solution model based on the mechanical oscillations of MNPs in magnetoacoustic tomography with magnetic induction(MAT-MI). It is proved that only the second harmonic magnetoacoustic oscillations can be generated by MNPs under an alternating magnetic excitation. The acoustic pressure of the 2H-MAR is proportional to the square of the magnetic field intensity and exhibits a linear increase with the concentration of MNPs. Numerical simulations of the 2H-MAR are confirmed by the experimental measurements for various magnetic field intensities and solution concentrations using a laser vibrometer. The favorable results demonstrate the feasibility of the harmonic measurements without the fundamental interference of the electromagnetic excitation, and suggest a new harmonic imaging strategy of MAT-MI for MNPs with enhanced spatial resolution and improved signal-to-noise ratio in biomedical applications.     

Effective Polytropic Indices of Anisotropic Planetary Magnetosheath Plasmas with Magnetoacoustic Waves

Magnetosheath models for the planets Earth, Jupiter and Saturn are developed within the frame of the double‐adiabatic Chew‐Goldberger‐Low approximation. It is shown that in all three magnetosheaths slow and fast magnetoacoustic waves are generated, the dispersions of which considerably differ from that of isotropic systems. If slow magnetoacoustic waves exist in the magnetosheaths, then the effective polytropic coefficient of the plasma may be smaller than unity ‐ that means compression of the plasma is accompanied, in the average, by cooling. Such polytropic coefficients are not obtained when fast magnetoacoustic waves are excited (© 2011 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Reception pattern influence on magnetoacoustic tomography with magnetic induction

Based on the acoustic radiation theory of a dipole source,the influence of the transducer reception pattern is studied for magnetoacoustic tomography with magnetic induction(MAT-MI).Numerical studies are conducted to simulate acoustic pressures,waveforms,and reconstructed images with unidirectional,omnidirectional,and strong directional transducers.With the analyses of equivalent and projection sources,the influences of the model dimension and the layer effect are qualitatively analyzed to evaluate the performance of MAT-MI.Three-dimensional simulation studies show that the strong directional transducer with a large radius can reduce the influences of equivalent sources,projection sources,and the layer effect effectively,resulting in enhanced pressure and improved image contrast,which is beneficial for boundary pressure extraction in conductivity reconstruction.The reconstructed conductivity contrast images present the conductivity boundaries as stripes with different contrasts and polarities,representing the values and directions of the conductivity changes of the scanned layer.The favorable results provide solid evidence for transducer selection and suggest potential practical applications of MAT-MI in biomedical imaging.     

Acoustic dipole radiation model for magnetoacoustic tomography with magnetic induction

An acoustic dipole radiation model for magnetoacoustic tomography with magnetic induction (MAT-MI) is pro-posed,based on the analyses of one-dimensional tissue vibration,three-dimensional acoustic dipole radiation and acoustic waveform detection with a planar piston transducer.The collected waveforms provide information about the conductiv-ity boundaries in various vibration intensities and phases due to the acoustic dipole radiation pattern.Combined with the simplified back projection algorithm,the conductivity configuration of the measured layer in terms of shape and size can be reconstructed with obvious border stripes.The numerical simulation is performed for a two-layer cylindrical phantom model and it is also verified by the experimental results of MAT-MI for a tissue-like sample phantom.The proposed model suggests a potential application of conductivity differentiation and provides a universal basis for the further study of conductivity reconstruction for MAT-MI.     

Anomalies of attenuation and phase velocity of surface acoustic waves in YBa2Cu3O7‒δ thin films in the vicinity of Tc

We present measurements of the attenuation and phase velocity of surface acoustic waves in thin YBa₂Cu₃O films as a function of temperature, in magnetic fields up to 3.6 T applied parallel to the c-axis of the films. We have observed anomalies in both, the attenuation and the phase velocity in the vicinity of the superconducting critical temperature which do not depend on the magnetic field. Possible origins of these anomalies, observed, to our knowledge, for the first time in YBa₂Cu₃O thin films, are discussed and compared to bulk acoustic wave experiments. We present a kind of feedback technique for surface acoustic waves which improves the sensitivity of this type of measurement. The actual sensitivity limits are mentioned. Received: 7 August 1997 / Revised: 7 November 1997 / Accepted: 17 November 1997     

High frequency fast magnetoacoustic modes in the plasma core

Fast magnetoacoustic modes (FMM) [known also as compressional Alfvén eigenmodes (CAE) and magnetosonic modes] with frequencies exceeding or equal the ion gyrofrequency are considered. It is shown that edge-localized FMM, which presumably are responsible for the superthermal ion cyclotron emission (ICE) observed in many experiments on tokamaks and stellarators, represent a particular case of these modes. In general, FMMs with frequencies above/about the ion gyrofrequency have different radial locations and structures. They can extend over a large part of the plasma cross section and even can have maximum amplitudes at the magnetic axis. Modes with the same frequency and the same poloidal mode number are multiple, having different radial structures. These results are obtained in the approximation of cylindrical plasma with one-ion species.     

Solitons of the resonant nonlinear Schrödinger equation with nontrivial boundary conditions: Hirota bilinear method

We use the Hirota bilinear approach to consider physically relevant soliton solutions of the resonant nonlinear Schrödinger equation with nontrivial boundary conditions, recently proposed for describing uniaxial waves in a cold collisionless plasma. By the Madelung representation, the model transforms into the reaction-diffusion analogue of the nonlinear Schrödinger equation, for which we study the bilinear representation, the soliton solutions, and their mutual interactions.