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A publication by ARDMS - The globally recognized standard of excellence in sonography - www.ARDMS.org
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Get connected with NewsWire! This bi-weekly e-newsletter from the American Registry for Diagnostic Medical Sonography® (ARDMS®), offers its Registrants and members of the sonography community current and innovative news and technology related to the field of sonography. |
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| Focused Ultrasound Targets Prostate Cancer
American men have been traveling to Canada and Mexico for a cutting edge prostate cancer treatment. It's called High Intensity Focused Ultrasounds or HIFU for short. Now, this promising therapy is undergoing clinical trials for approval in the U.S. South Texas men are helping test it.
Prostate cancer was the last thing on his mind when Roger Vann of New Braunfels went for a routine physical in 2006. At age 60, he got the diagnosis many men dread.
He considered surgery and radiation to cure his disease, but he feared the side effects other men experienced like incontinence and sexual dysfunction. "You know, if I'd have been 75 or 80 years old, maybe I would have considered one of these other options. But at 60 years old, you don't expect it to happen, and you're not totally through with life."
Vann opted for High Intensity Focused Ultrasound, a procedure he had to travel to Canada to get. Now, it's being performed in San Antonio. Urologist Dr. David Talley is lead investigator for a clinical trial.
During the procedure, the computer-controlled ultrasounds wand precisely focuses the energy into tiny zones which heat for three seconds and cool for three seconds. The high heat of more than 200 degrees Fahrenheit destroys the tissue without affecting any other sensitive structures around the gland.
The procedure takes about three hours. Tiny sections of the prostate are heated with microbursts of energy, vaporizing the cells. Constant monitoring cuts down on any collateral damage.
"You're actually visualizing the prostate," Dr. Talley explained. "You're vaporizing. You can actually see the tissue vaporizing. We call it popcorning. You see it kind of light up."
After the procedure, patients have to wear a catheter in their bladder for a few weeks, a requirement Vann says was no big deal.
Two years after his HIFU procedure, Roger is cancer free and free of any unwanted side effects. "I'll tell anybody who will listen," Vann said of HIFU. "Because this is what's important to me. It probably saved my life. And I hope is saves others without all the side effects."
View the article online.
Article written by staff at kvue.com and adapted for the purposes of this newsletter
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New Ultrasound Imaging Method to Become Available Soon
Undoubtedly, ultrasound technology is one of the most important innovations in medicine of the last century. It allows doctors to peer inside a pregnant woman's womb, and assess the health of her unborn child. At times, they can even discover a number of congenital defects early on in the pregnancy, and then some experts might be able to fix them even before birth. More than three decades ago, the bases for this new analysis technique were set, and, since then, future parents from around the world were awed by the doctor's practice, after seeing their baby for the first time.
Most of these people are usually amazed when they learn that the rather intricate images they see in front of their eyes are actually entirely generated by sound-waves, and that the faint reflection of these noises is trapped by senors in the medical instrument, and then processed by a computer to yield the image. A number of researchers from the Stanford acoustics group have tried to constantly improve the performance of ultrasound devices for about a decade, and especially that of transducers.
The latter device is the most important part of the ultrasound machine, and has inside it sensors that generate high-frequency sounds, between the 1- and 50-megahertz range. When these sounds hit tissue with lower or higher densities, they reflect back at different intensities themselves, and are again captured by the sensors that created them. At this point, they are converted back to electrical impulses, which are then analyzed by a processor, and turned into optical representations of the womb and the baby.
Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) have enabled Stanford researchers to construct a capacitive micro-machined ultrasonic transducer, the first innovation as far as ultrasound transducers go in a very, very long time. Known more commonly as CMUT, or silicon ultrasound, the new device is very different from standard transducers, which often use piezoelectric materials as a base.
"Further work also showed why these capacitive-transducers have greater bandwidth than piezoelectrics. The difference arises because a piezoelectric transducer is by nature a highly tuned device, like the pendulum of a clock. At its particular resonant frequency, a piezoelectric transducer undergoes high-amplitude oscillations, even with very little forcing, but at other frequencies, it barely moves at all - which is to say that it has very limited bandwidth," the experts say.
"The transducer is able to emit and detect the many different frequencies that are contained in a short ultrasonic pulse. The shorter the pulse you use to probe the patient's body, of course, the better the depth solution in the resulting image. And improved resolution is, after all, just what the doctor ordered," they add.
View the article online.
Article written by staff at softpedia.com and adapted for the purposes of this newsletter.
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Revolutionizing the Diagnosis of Serious Disease
Revolutionary ultrasonic nanotechnology that could allow scientists to see inside a patient's individual cells to help diagnose serious illnesses is being developed by researchers at The University of Nottingham.
The new technique would utilize ultrasound technology - more commonly used to look at whole bodies such as fetal scanners - to look inside cells. The components of the new technology would be many thousand times smaller than current systems.
The technology would be tiny enough to allow scientists to see inside and image individual cells in the human body, which would further our understanding of the structure and function of cells and could help to detect abnormalities to diagnose serious illnesses such as some cancers.
The work by the Ultrasonics Group in the Division of Electrical Systems and Optics has been deemed so potentially innovative it has recently been awarded a £850,000 five-year Platform Grant by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).
Ultrasound refers to sound waves that are at a frequency too high to be detected by the human ear, typically 20 kHz and above. Medical ultrasound uses an electrical transducer the size of a matchbox to produce sound waves at much higher frequencies, typically around 100-1000 times higher to probe bodies.
The Nottingham researchers are aiming to produce a miniaturized version of this technology, with transducers so tiny that you could fit 500 across the width of one human hair which would produce sound waves at frequencies a thousand times higher again, in the GHz range.
Dr. Matt Clark of the Ultrasonics Group, said: "By examining the mechanical properties inside a cell there is a huge amount that we can learn about its structure and the way it functions. But it's very much a leap into the unknown as this has never been achieved before.
"One of the reasons for this is that it presents an enormous technical challenge. To produce nano-ultrasonics you have to produce a nano-transducers, which essentially means taking a device that is currently the size of a matchbox and scaling it down to the nanoscale. How do you attach a wire to something so small?
"Our answer to some of these challenges is to create a device that works optically - using pulses of laser light to produce ultrasound rather than an electrical current. This allows us to talk to these tiny devices."
The new technology may also allow scientists to see objects even smaller than optical microscopes and be so sensitive they may be able to measure single molecules.
In addition to medical applications, the new technology would have important uses as a testing facility for industry to assess the integrity and quality of materials and to detect tiny defects which could have an impact on performance or safety.
Ultrasonics is currently used in applications such as testing landing gear components in the aero industry for cracks and damage which may not be immediately visible or may develop with use.
The group is also looking at developing new inspection techniques for inspecting engineering metamaterials - advanced composites that are currently impossible to inspect with ultrasound. These materials offer huge performance advantages allowing radical new engineering but can't be widely used because of the difficulty of inspection.
Dr. Clark added: "We are also applying our technology to nanoengineering because we have to match the enormous growth in nanotechnology with techniques to inspect the nanoworld. As products and their components become ever tinier, the testing facilities for those also need to be scaled down accordingly.
In NEMS (nanoelectromechanical) and MEMS (microelectromechanical) based machines there is an increasing demand for testing facilities which offer the same capabilities as those for real-world sized devices.
View the article online.
Article written by staff at alphagalileo.org and adapted for the purposes of this newsletter.
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Bill Ban on Non-Medical
They've been dubbed "entertainment ultrasounds." They're not ordered by your doctor, but they provide a detailed look at your unborn child inside the womb. Although they're gaining in popularity among pregnant women, others are fighting to stop them.
This is one of those cases where the law hasn't yet caught up with the technology. With 3D ultrasounds, you can get a very detailed picture of your baby's face and watch them move around. People can now make albums and videos of their children before they're born. The only problem is that sonography is not a licensed profession and the industry is not regulated at all.
News Channel 8 first met Gina Beaudoin back in December doing an ultrasound for a family whose husband was on a Navy submarine. Six months later, her budding business is facing the fight of its life. It's called "A Tiny Perspective" -- they provide 3D and 4D ultrasound pictures and videos; a window into the womb.
"It gives them a very close look and an actual view of what the baby's going to look like and the bonding experience is unlike any other," said Beaudoiun.
But a new bill (in Connecticut) will ban all non-medical ultrasounds in the state.
"Ultrasounds deliver heat and they deliver vibration. So, when you deliver heat and vibration to a pregnant woman, you deliver risk as well," said Rep. Deb Heinrich of Madison.
Rep. Heinrich introduced the legislation and it is backed by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists
. The evidence is inconclusive as to whether it harms a fetus. But, they believe, caution is key and they say, "Non-medical ultrasounds may falsely reassure women as evidence of fetal health and appropriate development. And, abnormalities may be detected in settings that are not prepared to discuss and provide follow-up for concerning findings."
Beaudoin said, in fact, parents who already know their child has abnormalities is part of a growing clientele because it helps them to prepare.
"Them seeing a defect in their baby gave them a level of comfort; know what is coming," said Beaudoin.
Beaudoin said no one's taking into account the benefits. They do this free for military families so that faraway fathers can feel more a part of the pregnancy process. Beaudoin is certified but there's no state or national standard.
"We do keep the health and safety of the mother in the forefront of everything we do," said Beaudoin
Beaudoin said the majority of their clients only do one visit and they only do them after the mom has had their second trimester ultrasound from their doctor.
There are only three businesses that provide this service in Connecticut and they tell News Channel 8 they would prefer the state regulate them instead of ban them. If the governor signs the bill, as of July 1st, you'll need a doctor's note to get it done.
View the article online.
Article written by staff at wtnh.com and adapted for the purposes of this newsletter.
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Dr. Haitham Elsamaloty and UT Medical Center's 3T MRI
Lead author of the paper, Dr. Haitham Elsamaloty, associate professor of radiology, said, "Our study suggests an important role for 3T MRI, especially for women who are at a high risk of breast cancer, in early diagnosis and in accurately evaluating the extent of disease, which is a crucial factor in planning appropriate therapy."
The objective of the study was to assess the sensitivity and specificity of 3T MRI compared with those of mammography and sonography in the evaluation of breast cancer. In other words, how accurately could the 3T MRI detect disease or abnormality without missing any positive cases, while at the same time not suggesting any false positives? The study also sought to compare the 3T to previous MRI machines.
The study was conducted between May 2006 and October 2007 when 434 women at high risk of breast cancer underwent breast MRI, mammography and sonography in the Department of Radiology at The University of Toledo Medical Center. Patients were considered at high risk of breast cancer if they had a personal or strong family history of breast cancer or a positive genetic breast cancer test result.
The study results found the 3T MRI is more sensitive than mammography and sonography in the detection of breast cancer and in characterization of small lesions, but it also results in some false-positive results. Specifically, the 3T MRI correctly detected 100 percent of the study's 66 true malignant lesions compared with 81.8 percent accuracy with mammography and 86.4 percent accuracy with sonography.
However, the 3T also suggested 49 masses to be malignant that ended up being confirmed benign by biopsy.
Elsamaloty said because use of MRI in detecting breast cancer is relatively new compared to the other methods, its specificity is expected to increase with experience.
Compared with previously published results, the study also found the 3T MRI has a higher sensitivity than the 1T and 1.5T versions in the detection of breast cancer with no significant difference in specificity.
All in all, Elsamaloty believes the study demonstrates that 3T MRI is an important tool in conjunction with mammography and sonography in the detection of breast cancer.
"We feel that our study will have a positive effect on the future and advancement of 3T breast MRI," Elsamaloty said. "It will encourage us and other researchers to pursue further work in this area."
Although the 3T MRI is clearly more effective than mammography and sonography, it is currently used primarily for high-risk patients because routine screening remains prohibitively expensive.
View the article online.
Article written by staff at utoledo.edu and adapted for the purposes of this newsletter.
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