Centre National De La Recherche Scientifique

Ecole Superieure De Physique Et De Chimie Industrielles De La Ville De Paris

Inserm (institut National De La Sante Et De La Recherche Medicale)

Institut National De La Sante Et De La Recherche Medicale

Sorbonne Université

Centre National De La Recherche Scientifique-cnrs

Universite Paris Cité

Inserm

Clément Papadacci

Mathieu Pernot

Mickaël Tanter

Mathias Fink

Thomas Deffieux

Oscar Demeulenaere

Hugues Favre

While 3D ultrasound imaging is becoming a powerful tool in medical field, the main drawback is the difficulty to image large 3D volume, mainly related to the dimensions of the 2D array of transducers. In order to not lose in spatial resolution, it is necessary to use an array of transducers, wherein the size of the transducers does not exceed the wavelength of the ultrasound wave. Such requirement leads to dimensions of array for imaging large 3D volume which are not reachable or at too high cost with the current technology. The present disclosure overcomes the above technology limitation by using greater transducers, and where each transducer has a reception surface with a curved shape or is fitted with an acoustic lens. Such configuration of transducers leads to 2D array of transducers suitable for imaging large 3D volume, as a brain or a heart, with high resolution and high sensitivity.

Divergent lens array

The present invention relates to the field of ultrasounds and imagining of the coronary blood flow of the heart. Patients with coronary microvascular dysfunction (CMD) have poor prognostic with significantly higher rates of cardiovascular events, including hospitalization for heart failure, sudden cardiac death, and myocardial infarction (MI). Despite the urgent clinical need, there are no non-ionizing and non-invasive techniques available in clinic to directly visualize the coronary microvasculature and assess the local coronary microvascular system. Flow imaging remains a difficult task to perform in the heart because of the fast movements of this organ. In order to overcome the limitations of actual imaging methods for the coronary blood flow, the inventors proposed an ultrasound ultrafast imaging method that automatically detect the time periods in which the myocardium velocity is low and estimate the coronary flow velocity and the tissue velocity from the same data acquisition.

3-D ultrasound coronarography, a non-ionizing and non-invasive technology for multi-scale anatomical and functional imaging of coronary circulation

Because of the increase of the obesity related diseases, it is desirable to be able to detect a fatty liver and quantify the content in fat for the fatty liver. Known methods are biopsy and magnetic resonance imaging. However, biopsy is an invasive method and magnetic resonance imaging is a complicated method to carry out. The inventors propose a new ultrasonic method, which is more compliant with a regular control of the content in fat for the fatty liver for a subject. This method notably relies on a smart exploitation of the coherence properties of ultrasound pulses applied to the liver. This method has already been validated on sane subjects as providing accurate measurements, notably for fat content.

Method for measuring the speed of sound in liver with a specific probe and associated methods and devices

A method for mapping fibrous media by propagation of ultrasound from a set transducers, wherein: a number of unfocused incident ultrasonic waves having different wavefronts are emitted; the signals reverberated by the medium toward each transducer are captured; coherent signals respectively corresponding, for each transducer, to contributions coming from different fictitious focal points in the medium are determined; and then the orientation of the fibers is determined by comparing a spatial coherence between said coherent signals, in a plurality of directions.

Method and device for mapping fibrous media

Growing community of inventors

Paris, France

Clément Papadacci