SEMINAR – Technical Developments of the Ultrasound

Abstract:

The application of ultrasound imaging to the diagnosis and monitoring of the lung condition is nowadays receiving growing attention from both the clinical and technical world. The advantages of ultrasound are in fact numerous when compared to other imaging modalities like CT: availability at patients site, low cost, real time, safety.

However, despite the vast amount of medical evidence showing how ultrasound can be used to gather diagnostic information, dedicated technical developments are still lacking. This leaves the clinicians with the only option of using standard ultrasound scanners and probes, and consequently, implies that decisions are often based on imaging artefacts. Standard ultrasound imaging is in fact based on the assumption that, among the structures present in the field of view, only little variations in the speed-of sound are present. This is clearly not the case with the lung, due to the presence of air.

In this talk, recently developed multi-frequency imaging modalities and signal processing techniques dedicated to the analysis of the lung response to ultrasound will be introduced and discussed. In-vitro and clinical data will be presented which show how the study of the ultrasound spectral feature could lead to a quantitative ultrasound method dedicated to the lung. Moreover, preliminary results on the application of Deep Learning to the localisation and detection of clinically relevant imaging artefact will be presented.

Biography:

Dr. Libertario Demi is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Trento, Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science, and Head of the Ultrasound Research Laboratory. His research activity focuses primarily on signal processing, image formation and image analysis for medical applications of ultrasound technologies.

He has been previously working at the Biomedical Photonic Imaging Group at the University of Twente, as visiting scholar and university researcher, on the design, development and testing of an ultrasound scanner for breast tomography of new generation which combines photoacoustics and (LIUS) ultrasound technologies. Moreover, he worked on PMUT sensor design and image-formation-algorithm development for SODAR applications in life science and integrated systems technology as R&D Engineer at IMEC and Ultrasound consultant at TMC, on quantitative ultrasound imaging for prostate cancer detection and on inaccessible-environment mapping at the Eindhoven University of Technology, as a PostDoc, completed a PhD in applied physics on ultrasound propagation modelling at the Delft University of Technology, and obtained a master degree (cum laude) in telecommunication engineering at the University of Pisa.

He is lecturer of Digital Signal Processing and Ultrasound Technologies for Medical Applications at the Master in Information and Communication Engineering, University of Trento.