(Sunday, 4/5/2020) 10:30 AM - 12:30 PM [Mountain Time (GMT-6)]
Diagnostic Physicists' required knowledge base of Ultrasound’s uses for medical purposes can vary widely from understanding the core requirements to implement meaningful Quality Assurance programs in general diagnostic imaging or automated breast volume scanning to understanding the physics behind advanced therapies like histotripsy. This session will provide an overview of these topics.
Quality Assurance of general diagnostic and automated breast volume scanning ultrasound systems encompasses many facets from pre-purchase technology assessment to routine system quality control components of the overall QA program. Current methods in use, recent developments, and challenges in these two areas will be discussed.
Histotripsy is a method that uses focused ultrasound to nucleate gas bubbles and produce tissue disruption/emulsification. Several approaches have been developed over the last few years for inducing such effects using ultrasound with short pulses having as little as a single predominant negative half cycle to pulses milliseconds in duration. The tissue emulsification can be down to the subcellular level, where the absence of heating allows for strong immunoresponse. For short pulses, the damaged area is controlled by the threshold phenomena associated with bubble nucleation where the tissue disruption can be confined to fractions of the lateral beam width with little collateral damage. In addition, manipulation of the residual nuclei allows even more uniform effects and adjustments of ultrasound parameters can selectively spare larger vessels from damage or retain the extracellular matrix. This alternative ultrasound approach offers opportunities in numerous medical applications without many of the complications associated with traditional thermal ablation.
Learning Objectives:
1. Identify the basic steps in a team-based approach to assessing ultrasound imaging systems prior to purchase
2. Understand current techniques for routine quality control
3. Describe emerging techniques in ultrasound quality assurance
4. Understand how ultrasound produces bubbles in tissue to be used for tissue damage
5. Understand the parameters that control the production of the histotripsy effect
6. Understand the potential advantages of histortipsy approach for therapy
Funding Support, Disclosures, and Conflict of Interest: J. Brian Fowlkes, PhD has the following disclosed Conflicts of Interest: Histosonics: Founder and Scientific Advisor with financial interest. GE Healthcare: Research collaborations Philips Healthcare: Research collaborations
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