特征空间和符号相干系数融合的最小方差超声波束形成

为了提高医学超声成像的空间分辨率,提出一种融合了特征空间最小方差与符号相干系数的波束形成方法。首先利用最小方差法计算回波数据的协方差矩阵和加权向量;然后对协方差矩阵进行特征分解得到信号子空间,并将加权向量投影到该空间上;最后计算符号相干系数,用于优化特征空间法得到的回波信号,最终获得超声成像数据。为验证算法的有效性,对医学超声成像中常用的点目标、斑目标进行仿真,对点目标仿体和人体颈动脉组织进行超声成像实验。结果表明:所提出的方法在分辨率、对比度以及稳健性等方面都优于传统的延时叠加算法、最小方差算法、特征空间最小方差法以及特征空间与相干系数融合的方法。     

Sequential beamforming for synthetic aperture imaging

Synthetic aperture sequential beamforming (SASB) is a novel technique which allows to implement synthetic aperture beamforming on a system with a restricted complexity, and without storing RF-data. The objective is to improve lateral resolution and obtain a more depth independent resolution compared to conventional ultrasound imaging. SASB is a two-stage procedure using two separate beamformers. The initial step is to construct and store a set of B-mode image lines using a single focal point in both transmit and receive. The focal points are considered virtual sources and virtual receivers making up a virtual array. The second stage applies the focused image lines from the first stage as input data, and take advantage of the virtual array in the delay and sum beamforming. The size of the virtual array is dynamically expanded and the image is dynamically focused in both transmit and receive and a range independent lateral resolution is obtained. The SASB method has been investigated using simulations in Field II and by off-line processing of data acquired with a commercial scanner. The lateral resolution increases with a decreasing F#. Grating lobes appear if F# ⩽ 2 for a linear array with λ-pitch. The performance of SASB with the virtual source at 20 mm and F# = 1.5 is compared with conventional dynamic receive focusing (DRF). The axial resolution is the same for the two methods. For the lateral resolution there is improvement in FWHM of at least a factor of 2 and the improvement at −40 dB is at least a factor of 3. With SASB the resolution is almost constant throughout the range. For DRF the FWHM increases almost linearly with range and the resolution at −40 dB is fluctuating with range. The theoretical potential improvement in SNR of SASB over DRF has been estimated. An improvement is attained at the entire range, and at a depth of 80 mm the improvement is 8 dB.     

Effect of potassium monopersulfate (oxone) and operating parameters on sonochemical degradation of cationic dye in an aqueous solution

In this study, removal of Cresol Red (CR), a cationic triphenylmethane dye, by 300 kHz ultrasound was investigated. The effect of additive such as potassium monopersulfate (oxone) was studied. Additionally, sonolytic degradation of CR was investigated at varying power and initial pH. RC can be readily eliminated by the ultrasound process. The obtained results showed that. Sonochemical degradation of CR was strongly affected by ultrasonic power and pH. The degradation rate of the dye increased substantially with increasing ultrasonic power in the range of 20–80 W. This improvement could be explained by the increase in the number of active cavitation bubbles. The significant degradation was achieved in acidic conditions (pH = 2) where the color removal was 99% higher than those observed in higher pH aqueous solutions. The ultrasonic degradation of dye was enhanced by potassium monopersulfate (oxone) addition. It was found that the degradation of the dye was accelerated with increased concentrations of oxone for a reaction time of 75 min.     

Morphological characterisation of vesicular structures in the canine ejaculate

Membrane vesicles (MV) have been identified in seminal plasma from various species and they are thought to have a significant impact on semen quality and fertilisation. Although recently presence of MV has been also described in the canine ejaculate, detailed knowledge on their morphology is missing by now. This is, however, needed to provide a basis for detailed biochemical and functional studies as it is generally assumed that different MV populations are responsible for distinct tasks. MV were prepared for light (LM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) analysis using samples from normospermic dogs (n = 15), hypokinozoospermic dogs (n = 2, h) and one castrated azoospermic dog (a). For TEM, a new preparation protocol was used resulting in a higher MV retrieval rate. Using fractionated semen samples, most MV were identified in the second (sperm-rich) fraction in LM. Using pooled ejaculates, three different MV types could be identified in LM: (1) large MV with a marginal accumulation of opaque, granulated material, (2) medium- to small size MV with dense, opaque content and (3) small MV with no further defined contents. No direct contact between sperm and MV could be visualised. In TEM, 11 different MV types were identified based on diameter, structure, contents and electron density of contents as well as presence, number and size of smaller MV inside the MV itself. In normospermic males, secondary vesicles (type i, H, K1/2) included smaller vesicles and had a weighted mean diameter of 409.46 nm; hereof types i, H and K1 were smaller (mean: 287.55 nm, range: 51.25–994.86 nm) and type K2 was larger (mean: 1746.43 nm, range: 1003.66–3289.34 nm). Primary vesicles (mean diameter: 135.29 nm) – without vesicles inside – were differentiated into larger MV (A, B, C1/2) with a mean diameter of 219.63 nm (range: 39.08–1300.13 nm) and small primary MV (F, G) with a mean diameter of 66.12 nm (range: 24.62–99.84 nm). Whereas all mentioned MV were round to oval and mostly double-, rarely multiple-membrane surrounded, one longish primary MV type (L) was identified. In general, small primary vesicles were most common independent of semen quality, but distribution frequency of vesicle types differed between normospermic, pathospermic dogs and the castrated male. Mean weighted diameter of MV was 195.14 nm (range: 24.62–3289.34 nm) in normospermic males with the maximum diameter being smaller in the other dogs (h: 2096.78 nm; a: 1314.06 nm). Our results provide new information about ultrastructure and distribution frequency of canine MV in normospermic males and point to possible differences in MVs depending on semen quality. They provide the basis for further detailed functional analysis of MV subpopulations. Furthermore, the presence of MV in the castrated azoospermic male confirms an at least partly prostatic origin of canine MV.     

Deconvolution of vibroacoustic images using a simulation model based on a three dimensional point spread function

Vibro-acoustography (VA) is a medical imaging method based on the difference-frequency generation produced by the mixture of two focused ultrasound beams. VA has been applied to different problems in medical imaging such as imaging bones, microcalcifications in the breast, mass lesions, and calcified arteries. The obtained images may have a resolution of 0.7–0.8 mm. Current VA systems based on confocal or linear array transducers generate C-scan images at the beam focal plane. Images on the axial plane are also possible, however the system resolution along depth worsens when compared to the lateral one. Typical axial resolution is about 1.0 cm. Furthermore, the elevation resolution of linear array systems is larger than that in lateral direction. This asymmetry degrades C-scan images obtained using linear arrays. The purpose of this article is to study VA image restoration based on a 3D point spread function (PSF) using classical deconvolution algorithms: Wiener, constrained least-squares (CLSs), and geometric mean filters. To assess the filters’ performance on the restored images, we use an image quality index that accounts for correlation loss, luminance and contrast distortion. Results for simulated VA images show that the quality index achieved with the Wiener filter is 0.9 (when the index is 1.0 this indicates perfect restoration). This filter yielded the best result in comparison with the other ones. Moreover, the deconvolution algorithms were applied to an experimental VA image of a phantom composed of three stretched 0.5 mm wires. Experiments were performed using transducer driven at two frequencies, 3075 kHz and 3125 kHz, which resulted in the difference-frequency of 50 kHz. Restorations with the theoretical line spread function (LSF) did not recover sufficient information to identify the wires in the images. However, using an estimated LSF the obtained results displayed enough information to spot the wires in the images. It is demonstrated that the phase of the theoretical and the experimental PSFs are dissimilar. This fact prevents VA image restoration with the current theoretical PSF. This study is a preliminary step towards understanding the restoration of VA images through the application of deconvolution filters.     

Image quality of microns-thick specimens in the ultra-high voltage electron microscope

Image quality of MeV transmission electrons is an important factor for both observation and electron tomography of microns-thick specimens with the high voltage electron microscope (HVEM) and the ultra-HVEM. In this work, we have investigated image quality of a tilted thick specimen by experiment and analysis. In a 3 MV ultra-HVEM, we obtained transmission electron images in amplitude contrast of 100 nm gold particles on the top surface of a tilted 5 μm thick amorphous epoxy-resin film. From line profiles of the images, we then measured and evaluated image blurring, contrast, and the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) under different effective thicknesses of the tilted specimen and accelerating voltages of electrons. The variation of imaging blurring was consistent with the analysis based on multiple elastic scattering. When the effective thickness almost tripled, image blurring increased from ～3 to ～20 nm at the accelerating voltage of 3 MV. For the increase of accelerating voltage from 1 to 3 MV in the condition of the 14.6 μm effective thickness, due to the reduction of multiple scattering effects, image blurring decreased from ～54 to ～20 nm, and image contrast and SNR were both obviously enhanced by a factor of ～3 to preferable values. The specimen thickness was shown to influence image quality more than the accelerating voltage. Moreover, improvement on image quality of thick specimens due to increasing the accelerating voltage would become less when it was further increased from 2 to 3 MV in this work.     

Broadband optimal contrast resolution beamforming

This paper proposes a novel receive beamformer architecture for broadband imaging systems that uses unique finite impulse response (FIR) filters on each channel. The conventional delay-and-sum (DAS) beamformer applies receive apodization by weighting the signal on each receive channel prior to beam summation. Our proposed FIR beamformer passes the focused receive radio frequency (RF) signals through multi-tap FIR filters on each receive channel prior to summation. The receive FIR filters are constructed to maximize the contrast resolution of the system’s spatial response. The broadband FIR beamformer produces spatial point spread functions (PSFs) with narrower mainlobe widths and lower sidelobe levels than spatial PSFs produced by the conventional DAS beamformer.We present simulation results showing that FIR filters of modest tap lengths (3-7) can yield marked improvement in image contrast and point resolution. Specifically we show that 7-tap FIR filters can reduce sidelobe and grating lobe energy by 30 dB and improve contrast resolution by as much as 20 dB compared to conventional apodization profiles. This improvement in contrast resolution comes at the expense of a decrease in beamformer sensitivity. We investigate the effects of phase aberration and show in simulation results that the multi-tap FIR beamformer outperforms the unaberrated DAS beamformer by 8-12 dB even in the presence of moderate aberration characterized by a root-mean-square strength of 28 ns and a full-width at half-maximum correlation length of 3.6 mm. We show experimental results wherein multi-tap FIR filters decrease sidelobe energy in the resulting 2D spatial response while achieving a narrow mainlobe. We also show results where the FIR beamformer improves the contrast to noise ratio (CNR) in simulated B-mode cyst images by more than 4 dB. Our algorithm has the potential to significantly improve ultrasound beamforming in any application where the system response is reasonably well characterized. Furthermore, this algorithm can be used to increase contrast and resolution in one-way beamforming systems such as acousto-optic and opto-acoustic imaging.     

Design and evaluation of a unipolar aerosol charger to generate highly charged micron-sized aerosol particles

In this study, a unipolar charger for generating highly charged microparticles was designed and its performance was evaluated both theoretically and experimentally. The measured particle charge number and corona current of the charger were in good agreement with the theoretical results from FLUENT. The experimentally determined average particle charge number of 1 μm PSL under an applied voltage of 8 kV was 128, which agreed well with the theoretically predicted and simulated values of 118 and 121, respectively. Computational calculations revealed the average charge of 10 μm particles to be 7560 at an applied voltage of 8 kV.     

Three dimensional accurate morphology measurements of polystyrene standard particles on silicon substrate by electron tomography

Polystyrene latex (PSL) nanoparticle (NP) sample is one of the most widely used standard materials. It is used for calibration of particle counters and particle size measurement tools. It has been reported that the measured NP sizes by various methods, such as Differential Mobility Analysis, dynamic light scattering (DLS), optical microscopy (OM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM), differ from each other. Deformation of PSL NPs on mica substrate has been reported in AFM measurements: the lateral width of PSL NPs is smaller than their vertical height. To provide a reliable calibration standard, the deformation must be measured by a method that can reliably visualize the entire three dimensional (3D) shape of the PSL NPs. Here we present a method for detailed measurement of PSL NP 3D shape by means of electron tomography in a transmission electron microscope. The observed shape of the PSL NPs with 100 nm and 50 nm diameter were not spherical, but squished in direction perpendicular to the support substrate by about 7.4% and 12.1%, respectively. The high difference in surface energy of the PSL NPs and that of substrate together with their low Young modulus appear to explain the squishing of the NPs without presence of water film.     

New synthesis of high-quality storage phosphors

We present a single step synthesis method for the photostimulable X-ray storage phosphor BaFBr:Eu²⁺ which results in a highly sensitive powder with a relatively small average grain size of 5.4 μm. The starting chemical reagents are BaCO₃, NH₄F, NH₄Br and EuF₃. The reaction initiated by the decomposition of the ammonium materials leads to highly volatile hydrogen halide gases which react with the BaCO₃ to form BaFBr at temperatures up to 300 °C. Further heating results in the incorporation of Eu²⁺ and the formation of halide vacancies at temperatures in between 390 and 580 °C. The resulting photostimulated luminescence (PSL) efficiency is optimized after sintering at 800 °C. The reaction process is monitored by differential thermal analysis (DTA) and the reaction products are detected by mass-spectroscopy which confirms the proposed chemical reactions. Intermediate and final products are identified using X-ray diffraction. Photoluminescence (PL) and PSL spectra show the incorporation of Eu²⁺ into the lattice, as well as a PL peak at 470 nm which is not present in the PSL spectrum. This peak is shown to originate from O^2? in the lattice and directly affects the PSL sensitivity.     

Improved flatness and tunable bandwidth of the supercontinuum generation in all-normal dispersion-flattened PCF using Littman–Metcalf optical bandpass filter

We have proved that in an all-normal dispersion-flattened photonic crystal fiber (PCF), the four-wave mixing (FWM) process dominantly affects the flatness of the generated supercontinuum (SC). The numerical results show that pulses with steepened edges can enhance the FWM conversion efficiency during the SC’s generation and the minima of the spectral oscillatory structure will be smoothed. A double-pass Littman–Metcalf optical bandpass filter is used to make the 1.60 ps hyperbolic-Secant shaped pulses obtain steepened edges. The experimental results show that the flatness of the SC generated from the 4 nm filtered pulses is improved by 0.21 dB. The SC with 10–65 nm tunable bandwidths is obtained by adjusting the filter bandwidth from 1 nm to 7 nm. Further numerical results show that the filter induced SC’s flatness improvement is more effective for pulses with 2.0–4.0 ps FWHM. The improved SC can be used for applications which require stable modulation carriers and flexible bandwidth.     

Improved Statistically Optimal Nearfield Acoustical Holography in subsonically moving fluid medium

Statistically Optimal Nearfield Acoustical Holography (SONAH) can be used to reconstruct three-dimensional sound fields by projecting two-dimensional data measured on a “small” aperture that partially covers a composite sound source in a “static” fluid medium. Here, an improved SONAH procedure is proposed that includes the mean flow effects of a moving fluid medium while the sound source and receivers are stationary. The backward projection performance of the proposed procedure is further improved by using a wavenumber filter to suppress subsonic noise components. Through numerical simulations at Mach 0.6, it is shown that the improved procedure can accurately reconstruct sound source locations and radiation patterns: e.g., the spatially averaged reconstruction errors of the conventional and improved SONAH procedures are 15.40 dB and 0.19 dB, respectively, for a monopole simulation and 21.60 dB and 0.19 dB for an infinite-size panel. The wavenumber filter further reduces spatial noise, e.g., decreasing the reconstruction error from 1.73 dB to 0.19 dB for the panel simulation. An existing data measured in a wind tunnel operating at Mach 0.12 is reused for the validation. The locations and radiation patterns of the two loudspeakers are successfully identified from the sound fields reconstructed by using the proposed SONAH procedure.     

改进的最小方差算法在超声成像中的应用

为了提高最小方差超声成像算法的分辨率、对比度以及对噪声的鲁棒性,提出一种改进的最小方差成像算法。该方法首先基于回波信号中期望信号与噪声信号的可分离性将信号划分为期望信号和噪声信号,然后根据最小方差原理,求出加权向量使期望信号功率最小,同时,为了增加算法对噪声的鲁棒性,对信号方向向量增加一对约束条件,进一步提高图像质量。在全发全收和合成孔径模式下对点目标和吸声斑进行仿真,结果表明所提算法在全发全收模式下,-6 dB处分辨率在最小方差基础上提高了1倍左右,在合成孔径模式下,对比度在特征空间最小方差算法基础上提高了8 dB,且远优于传统延时叠加算法。最后通过实验进一步表明改进的最小方差算法图像在分辨率、对比度及对噪声的鲁棒性等方面表现更优,可以有效的改善超声图像的质量。     

High speed ultra short pulse fiber ring laser using photonic crystal fiber nonlinear optical loop mirror

A scheme to generate high speed optical pulse train with ultra short pulse width is proposed and experimentally studied. Two-step compression is used in the scheme: 20 GHz and 40 GHz pulse trains generated from a rational harmonic actively mode-locked fiber ring laser is compressed to a full width at half-maximum (FWHM) of ~ 1.5 ps using adiabatic soliton compression with dispersion shifted fibers (DSF). The pulse trains then undergo a pedestal removal process by transmission through a cascaded two photonic crystal fiber (PCF)-nonlinear optical loop mirrors (NOLM) realized using a double-ring structure. The shortest output pulse width obtained was ~ 610 fs for 20 GHz pulse train and ~ 570 fs for 40 GHz pulse train. The signal to noise ratio of the RF spectrum of the output pulse train is larger than 30 dB. Theoretical simulation of the NOLM transmission is conducted using split-step Fourier method. The results show that two cascaded NOLMs can improve the compression result compared to that for a single NOLM transmission.     

A novel method for chromatic-dispersion monitoring

A novel method for chromatic-dispersion monitoring based on PM–AM conversion is presented. A nonlinear element (NLE) was used as phase-modulator to improve the monitoring performance. The method was investigated numerically and experimentally for 40-Gbit/s signals in NRZ/RZ and CSRZ formats. The monitoring range was enlarged to 1670 ps/nm, and the monitoring sensitivity was improved to 0.012 dB/(ps/nm) for the NRZ signal. The corresponding values for the RZ50 signal were 680 ps/nm and 0.0046 dB/(ps/nm), respectively, and, for the CSRZ signal, 620 ps/nm and 0.0092 dB/(ps/nm), respectively.     

A miniaturized HTS microwave receiver front-end subsystem for radar and communication applications

This paper presents a miniaturized high performance high temperature superconducting (HTS) microwave receiver front-end subsystem, which uses a mini stirling cryocooler to cool a high selective HTS filter and a low noise amplifier (LNA). The HTS filter was miniaturized by using specially designed compact resonators and fabricating with double-sided YBCO films on LAO substrate which has a relatively high permittivity. The LNA was specially designed to work at cryogenic temperature with noise figure of 0.27 dB at 71 K. The mini cryocooler, which is widely used in infrared detectors, has a smaller size (60 mm × 80 mm × 100 mm) and a lighter weight (340 g) than the stirling cryocoolers commonly used in other HTS filter subsystem. The whole front-end subsystem, including a HTS filter, a LNA, a cryocooler and the vacuum chamber, has a size of only φ120 mm × 175 mm and a weight of only 3.3 kg. The microwave devices inside the subsystem are working at 71.8 K with a consumed cooling power of 0.325 W. The center frequency of this subsystem is 925.2 MHz and the bandwidth is 2.7 MHz (which is a fractional bandwidth of 0.2%), with the gain of 19.75 dB at center frequency and the return loss better than ?18.11 dB in the pass band. The stop band rejection is more than 60 dB and the skirt slope is exceeding 120 dB MHz^?1. The noise figure of this subsystem is less than 0.8 dB. This front-end subsystem can be used in radars and communication systems conveniently due to it’s compact size and light weight.     

Study and optimization of the ultrasound-enhanced cleaning of an ultrafiltration ceramic membrane through a combined experimental–statistical approach

Membrane fouling is one of the main drawbacks of ultrafiltration technology during the treatment of dye-containing effluents. Therefore, the optimization of the membrane cleaning procedure is essential to improve the overall efficiency. In this work, a study of the factors affecting the ultrasound-assisted cleaning of an ultrafiltration ceramic membrane fouled by dye particles was carried out. The effect of transmembrane pressure (0.5, 1.5, 2.5 bar), cross-flow velocity (1, 2, 3 m s⁻¹), ultrasound power level (40%, 70%, 100%) and ultrasound frequency mode (37, 80 kHz and mixed wave) on the cleaning efficiency was evaluated. The lowest frequency showed better results, although the best cleaning performance was obtained using the mixed wave mode.A Box–Behnken Design was used to find the optimal conditions for the cleaning procedure through a response surface study. The optimal operating conditions leading to the maximum cleaning efficiency predicted (32.19%) were found to be 1.1 bar, 3 m s⁻¹ and 100% of power level.Finally, the optimized response was compared to the efficiency of a chemical cleaning with NaOH solution, with and without the use of ultrasound. By using NaOH, cleaning efficiency nearly triples, and it improves up to 25% by adding ultrasound.     

Ultrasound-enhanced chemiluminescence tomography in biological tissue

This paper reports ultrasound-assisted optical imaging of chemiluminescent probes in biological tissue. A focused low power ultrasound sonochemically enhances a peroxyoxalate chemiluminescence (CL) that involves indocyanine green (ICG) as luminescent pigments. By scanning the focus, it produces tomographic images of CL in scattering media. The authors demonstrate imaging using a slab of porcine muscle measuring 50 × 50 × 75 mm, in which a capsuled CL reagent is embedded at 25 mm depth. Spatial resolution of imaging and concentration characteristics of CL reagents to enhanced CL intensity are also studied to evaluate the potential for use in bio-imaging applications with exploring the CL enhancement mechanisms. CL enhancement ratio, defined as the ratio of ultrasonically enhanced CL intensity to the base intensity without ultrasound irradiation, was found to be constant even in varying ICG and oxidizer concentrations, implying to be applicable for quantitative determination of these molecules.     

Performance evaluation of 64 × 10 Gbps and 96 × 10 Gbps DWDM system with hybrid optical amplifier for different modulation formats

In this paper, we investigated the performance of multi terabits DWDM system consisting of hybrid optical amplifier RAMAN-EDFA for different data format such as non-return to zero (NRZ), return to zero (RZ) and differential phase shift keying (DPSK). We find that in 64 × 10 and 96 × 10 Gbps, RZ is more adversely affected by nonlinearities, where as NRZ and DPSK is more affected by dispersion. We further show that RZ provide good quality factor (13.88 dB and 15.93 dB for 64 and 96 channels), less eye closure (2.609 dB and 3.191 dB for 64 and 96 channels) and acceptable bit error rate (3.89 × 10⁸ and 1.24 × 10⁹ for 64 and 96 channels) at the respective distance as compare to other existing modulation format. We further investigated the maximum single span distance covered by using existing data formats.     

V-band directional tandem coupler of monolithic uniplanar structure

We present a uniplanar coplanar-waveguide 3-dB tandem coupler operating at V-band frequencies. The uniplanar structure is monolithically fabricated by using two-section parallel-coupled lines and air-bridge crossovers replacing the conventional multilayer or bonded structures. Due to an optimized tandem structure and non-bonded crossovers minimizing the parasitic components, a maximum coupling of 2.5 dB is measured at 62 GHz with a 2 dB bandwidth of 83%, while a high directivity factor of 33 dB is simultaneously obtained at 58–62 GHz. Over the entire design frequency range of 30–90 GHz, we achieve good phase unbalance of 90 ± 6.0°, as well as return loss and isolation lower than −23 and −16 dB, respectively.