Critical issues in breast imaging by vibro-acoustography

Clinically, there are two important issues in breast imaging: detection of microcalcifications and identification of mass lesions. X-ray mammography is the main imaging method used for detection of microcalcification, and ultrasound imaging is normally used for detection of mass lesions in breast. Both these methods have limitations that reduce their clinical usefulness. For this reasons, alternative breast imaging modalities are being sought. vibro-acoustography is an imaging modality that has emerged in recent years. This method is based on low-frequency harmonic vibrations induced in the object by the radiation force of ultrasound. This paper describes potential applications of vibro-acoustography for breast imaging and addresses the critical imaging issues such as detection of microcalcifications and mass lesions in breast. Recently, we have developed a vibro-acoustography system for in vivo breast imaging and have tested it on a number of volunteers. Resulting images show soft tissue structures and calcifications within breast with high contrast, high resolution, and no speckles. The results have been verified using X-ray mammography. The encouraging results from in vitro and in vivo experiments suggest that further development of vibro-acoustography technology may lead to a new clinical tool that can be used to detect microcalcifications as well as mass lesions in breast.     

Molecular impurities in helium clusters

We review recently developed theories of molecular interactions with helium clusters. Ground state energies and structures are obtained from Monte Carlo and density functional calculations for a variety of impurities and a range of cluster sizes. Of particular interest are chemical potentials, location of the impurity, and shape of the helium density surrounding it. Included in the work summarized here are results for light molecules (H₂ and D₂) which interact weakly with He and results for heavier molecules (Cl₂ and SF₆) which interact more strongly with He. Finally, theoretical and experimental results are compared for SF₆ in helium clusters.     

Isotactic polypropylene foams crystallized from compressed propane solutions

Crystallization of isotactic polypropylene (iPP) from homogeneous solution in supercritical propane yields open-cell foams of high surface area (120–150 m²/g). Their morphology usually consists of microspheres with a dense core and a porous periphery of radiating fibrils. Pore radii covering the mesopore range (2–50 nm), making their largest contribution at 10–20 nm, were calculated from nitrogen adsorption isotherms. Surface areas of the correct order of magnitude are obtained by assuming that gas adsorption takes place on the surfaces of lamellar crystals. Crystallization of iPP from n-butane and n-heptane generates foams of lower mesoporosity and smaller surface area. These more “liquid-like” solvents do not allow the formation of an open network of mesopores or they promote its collapse upon their removal. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Polym Sci B: Polym Phys 36: 617–627, 1998     

Tight-binding studies of surface effects on electronic structure of CdSe nanocrystals: the role of organic ligands, surface reconstruction, and inorganic capping shells

We utilize a tight-binding model to study the effects of surface structure on electronic properties of CdSe clusters. The model takes into account experimental information about structure and shape of the nanocrystals, as well as the nature and distribution of capping ligands. The effects of both organic capping ligands and inorganic capping shells on the densities of states (DOS) and on the single-particle absorption spectra of the clusters are calculated for various cluster shapes and sizes, and are compared to results for clusters with truncated surfaces. For organic capping ligands, the effect of ligand hybridization is investigated and a simple model of surface reconstruction is developed. Both ligand hybridization and surface reconstruction are seen to have a major influence on the band edge electronic and optical properties. Inorganic capping shells give rise to differential localization of valence and conduction band edge states, with the hole primarily confined to the core region and the electron more evenly distributed over both core and shell. Received 21 September 1998 / Received in final form: 15 December 1998     

Exact two-qubit universal quantum circuit

We provide an analytic way to implement any arbitrary two-qubit unitary operation, given an entangling two-qubit gate together with local gates. This is shown to provide explicit construction of a universal quantum circuit that exactly simulates arbitrary two-qubit operations in SU(4). Each block in this circuit is given in a closed form solution. We also provide a uniform upper bound of the applications of the given entangling gates, and find that exactly half of all the controlled-unitary gates satisfy the same upper bound as the CNOT gate. These results allow for the efficient implementation of operations in SU(4) required for both quantum computation and quantum simulation.     

Multiple solvation configurations around phthalocyanine in helium droplets

Recent measurements of the emission spectrum of phthalocyanine solvated in superfluid helium nanodroplets exhibit a constant 10.3 cm(-1) splitting of each emission line relative to the absorption spectrum. This splitting has been attributed to two distinct helium environments near the surface of the phthalocyanine molecule. Rigid-body path-integral Monte Carlo provides a means of investigating the origin of the splitting on a detailed microscopic level. Path-integral Monte Carlo simulations of 4He(N)-phthalocyanine at 0.625 K with N ranging from 24 to 150 show two distinct helium configurations. One configuration is commensurate with the molecular substrate and the other is a triangular lattice. We investigate the energetics of these two configurations and use a method for calculating electronic spectral shifts for aromatic molecule-rare-gas clusters due to dispersive interactions to estimate the spectral splitting that would arise from the two helium configurations seen for N=150. The results are in reasonable agreement with the experimentally measured splitting, supporting the existence of two distinct local helium environments near the surface of the molecule in the nanodroplets.     

Lineshape of rotational spectrum of CO in (4)He droplets

In a recent experiment the rovibrational spectrum of CO isotopomers in superfluid helium-4 droplets was measured, and a Lorentzian lineshape with a large line width of 0.024 K (half width at half maximum) was observed [von Haeften et al., Phys. Rev. B 73, 054502 (2006)]. In the accompanying theoretical analysis it was concluded that the broadening mechanism may be homogeneous and due to coupling to collective droplet excitations (phonons). Here we generalize the lineshape analysis to account for the statistical distribution of droplet sizes present in nozzle expansion experiments. These calculations suggest an alternative explanation for the spectral broadening, namely, that the coupling to phonons can give rise to an inhomogeneous broadening as a result of averaging isolated rotation-phonon resonances over a broad cluster size distribution. This is seen to result in Lorentzian lineshapes, with a width and peak position that depend weakly on the size distribution, showing oscillatory behavior for the narrower size distributions. These oscillations decrease with droplet size and for large enough droplets ( approximately 10(4)) the line widths saturate at a value equal to the homogeneous line width calculated for the bulk limit.