Journal Paper Accepted to IEEE TBME

Congratulations to Mardava Gubbi! His first-author paper entitled “In Vivo Demonstration of Deep Learning-Based Photoacoustic Visual Servoing System” was accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering.

This paper is the first to present a real-time deep learning-based photoacoustic visual servoing system utilizing both object detection and instance segmentation to estimate catheter tip positions in three spatial dimensions from a single frame of two-dimensional of raw photoacoustic channel data. This system was designed with two features not present in previous amplitude-based or deep learning-based photoacoustic visual servoing systems. First, we estimated the location of the catheter tip along the elevation dimension of the transducer with the input being a single frame of two-dimensional of raw channel data. Second, the integration of force control into our visual servoing system improved the tracking of targets across uneven imaging surfaces. These features improve the potential of our novel visual servoing system for clinical translation in cardiac catheterizations procedures (and other minimally invasive interventional procedures).

Citation: M. R. Gubbi, A. Kolandaivelu, N. Venkatayogi, J. Zhang, P. Warbal, G. C. Keene, M. Khairalseed, J. Chrispin, and M. A. Lediju Bell, “In Vivo Demonstration of Deep Learning-Based Photoacoustic Visual Servoing System”, IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control (accepted June 23, 2025) [pdf]

Prof. Bell Wins Award from The Franklin Institute

Congratulations to Prof. Bell! She is the winner of the 2025 Benjamin Franklin NextGen Award from The Franklin Institute.

For two centuries, The Franklin Institute Awards has paid tribute to America’s first citizen scientist, Benjamin Franklin, by honoring great minds in science, engineering, and industry, including Nikola Tesla, Marie and Pierre Curie, Thomas Edison, Max Planck, Albert Einstein, etc.  Since 2021, the Benjamin Franklin NextGen Award has been presented annually to an early-career investigator for a transformative discovery, development, innovation, or invention in science or engineering. Dr. Bell is being recognized “for her contributions to the novel design of medical imaging systems involving ultrasound and light that make robotic and non-robotic guided surgery safer and more effective.”

The following video was created for the general public to get to know Prof. Bell as she shares something on her bucket list, advice for aspiring scientists, a fun science fact, and more!

Beginning April 29, the Franklin Institute will present a series of Awards Week events, including the 2025 Franklin Institute Awards Ceremony and Dinner, which will be live streamed on May 1, 2025 at 7pm. Earlier that day, Dr. Bell will present a public lecture.

Convocation Book (contains details about award laureates)

Public Lecture (virtual attendance registration link)

Livestream Link (for the Awards Ceremony)

Journal Paper Accepted to IEEE T-UFFC

Congratulations to Mardava Gubbi! His first-author paper entitled “Deep learning to localize photoacoustic sources in three dimensions: Theory and implementation” was accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control.

This paper introduces two novel deep learning-based three-dimensional (3D) photoacoustic point source localization systems. One system uses an object detection-based approach with elevation-encoded classification (System A). The second system uses our novel theoretical framework relating the three-dimensional location of photoacoustic point sources, sound speeds, and waveform shapes in photoacoustic raw channel data (System B). System B leverages our theoretical framework to implement a novel instance segmentation and least squares optimization-based photoacoustic point source location and sound speed estimation approach. This instance segmentation-based system improves localization and sound speed estimation performance in simulated, phantom, and ex vivo data compared to traditional methods. Overall, the results enhance the potential applicability of photoacoustic guidance to surgical and interventional scenarios.

Citation: M. R. Gubbi and M. A. Lediju Bell, Deep Learning to Localize Photoacoustic Sources in Three Dimensions: Theory and Implementation, IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control (accepted April 15, 2025) [pdf]

Two Journal Papers Recently Published in BOE and UMB

Congratulations to Nethra and Junhao! Their first-author papers were recently published in Biomedical Optics Express and Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology, respectively.

Multispectral photoacoustic imaging of breast cancer tissue with histopathology validation describes the first known work to use multispectral photoacoustic imaging with optical wavelengths up to 2000 nm to provide pathological information about breast tissue without traditional staining staining. We leveraged machine learning to differentiate between healthy and cancerous tissues based on photoacoustic spectra. Using our custom imaging platform, this method generates a virtual stain of a microscope tissue slide in under 30 minutes, compared to the more than 24 hours required for conventional H&E staining. The co-registered ultrasound images provide complementary anatomical context to the pathological information derived from multispectral photoacoustic images. Our approach has the potential to enable real-time tumor margin determination during biopsy or surgery.

Comparative Assessment of Real-Time and Offline Short-Lag Spatial Coherence (SLSC) Imaging of Ultrasound Breast Masses is the first to evaluate the effectiveness of real-time SLSC imaging, relative to historical offline SLSC implementations, when differentiating fluid from solid masses. Real-time SLSC imaging reduced uncertainty about fluid masses that existed when reading B-mode images alone. The application of the generalized contrast-to-noise ratio (gCNR) to real-time SLSC images further enhanced the sensitivity and specificity of cystic versus solid differentiation to overcome residual reader uncertainty. These benefits are promising to reduce 2-year follow-up recommendations (i.e., BI-RADS 3 diagnoses) or recommendations for more invasive procedures (e.g., biopsy, aspiration).

Rhea Rasquina Wins BiOS 3-Minute Poster Competition

Rhea Rasquina, a 2024 summer REU student in the PULSE Lab, won 1st place in the BiOs Student 3-Minute Poster Competition at SPIE Photonics West 2025, taking home the coveted $500 prize. Rhea concisely summarized her summer research efforts on the influence of skin tone on target size detectability in photoacoustic breast imaging. The presentation was judged based on content and effectiveness by representatives from the Editorial Boards of JBO, Neurophotonics, and Biophotonics Discovery. Organized annually by SPIE, this year’s competition was co-hosted by Prof. Muyinatu Bell (JBO EIC) and Prof. Darren Roblyer (Biophotonics Discovery EIC), and the judges were Profs. Amy Oldenburg, Jana Kainerstorfer, Darcy Peterka, and Mihaela Balu.

Rhea Rasquina, with 1st place award check, flanked by co-hosts, judges, and winners of the second and third place award (Photo credit: SPIE)

Congratulations, Rhea! And, thanks to the SPIE journals, JBO, BIOS, and Neurophotonics for sponsoring this competition.

More details about the award-winning research are available in Rhea’s first-author publication in Biophotonics Discovery.

Categories All

Six Abstracts Accepted to SPIE

Six PULSE Lab abstracts were accepted to SPIE Photonics West, which is taking place place January 25- 30, 2025, and the following work will be presented:

Photo with one of the winners from the 2024 3-minute poster competition, where Prof. Bell served as a a judge representative from the JBO Editorial Board. This year Prof. Bell will host as the new JBO EIC.

Congratulations to Junior, Gareth, Taylor, Rhea, and Nethra!

In addition to the accepted papers, Rhea Rasquinha will participate in the 3-minute poster competition:

Prof. Bell was invited to speak on recent work from the PULSE Lab:

And, Prof. Bell will deliver a lightning talk on leadership at the celebration of Women in Optics event:

Welcome to Ajay Gunalan

The PULSE Lab welcomes Ajay Gunalan. Ajay is a postdoctoral fellow who recently completed his PhD at the Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa, Italy. We are thrilled to have him as a the newest member of our team.

Welcome Ajay!

Research Featured on Cover of Biophotonics Discovery

Congratulations to Junior Arroyo! His first-author publication is featured on the cover of Biophotonics Discovery. The figure is from the article “Predictive model for laser-induced tissue necrosis with immunohistochemistry validation” by J. Junior Arroyo, Arunima Sharma, Jiaxin Zhang, and Muyinatu A. Lediju Bell.

This work is the first to demonstrate a unified theoretical, computational, and experimental approach with quantitative immunohistochemistry (IHC) validation to determine laser safety for biological tissues other than skin or eyes. Although photoacoustic imaging has the potential to provide critical guidance in surgical interventions, its widespread use is challenged by the absence of applicable safety guidelines across diverse target tissues. Maximum permissible exposure (MPE) guidelines currently focus solely on skin and eyes. Results are promising to provide tissue-specific MPE guidelines to maintain healthy liver tissue during laser-based optical and photoacoustic surgeries and interventions. The presented approach and associated outcomes are promising for the introduction of tissue-specific safety guidelines for photoacoustic imaging and other optics-based imaging technologies that are designed to maximize signal-to-noise ratios while being designated as safe for patient use. In addition, the presented simulation framework and corresponding experimental protocols may be applied to other internal organs to achieve similar benefits.

Citation: Arroyo J, Sharma A, Zhang J, Bell MAL, Predictive model for laser-induced tissue necrosis with immunohistochemistry validation, Biophotonics Discovery 1(2):025003, 2024 [pdf]

PULSE Lab News

Prof. Bell Delivers Lopez Lecture to NIH NIBIB National Advisory Council

Prof. Bell was invited to give the annual Lopez Lecture to a prestigious group of individuals who are members of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Advisory Council for Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering. Her lecture took place on September 10, 2024, followed by Q&A with council members and awarding of a crystal memento from NIH National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) Director Bruce Tromberg.

The National Advisory Council for Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering advises the Department of Health and Human Services, the NIH, and the NIBIB on matters relating to the conduct and support of research, training, health information dissemination and other programs that address biomedical imaging, biomedical engineering and associated technologies and modalities with biomedical applications. Council members provide the second level review for all applications for funding of research and training grants or cooperative agreements by the NIBIB. The Council also advises on policy and program priorities.

This council meets three times per year, typically in January, May, and September. The September 2024 session was live-streamed and recorded, with the introduction to Prof. Bell’s lecture starting at the 2:55:30 timestamp of the NIH videocast: https://videocast.nih.gov/watch=54954.

Five Abstracts Accepted to IEEE UFFC-JS 2024


The following PULSE Lab abstracts were accepted for presentation during the 2024 IEEE Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control Joint Symposium (UFFC-JS) to be held September 22-26, 2024 in Taipei, Taiwain.

  1. Evaluation of Harmonic SLSC Beamforming Theory to be co-presented by Manik Kakkar, Mahban Gholijafari, and Prof. Bell in the session entitled MBB: Novel Beamforming Approaches (Poster) on Monday, September 23, 2024, 2:30 – 4:30 PM
  2. SLSC Beamforming with Filtered Cross-Correlation-Induced Harmonics to Improve Spatial Resolution to be presented by Manik Kakkar in the session entitled MBB: Novel Beamforming Approaches (Poster) on Monday, September 23, 2024, 2:30 – 4:30 PM
  3. Impact of Photoacoustic Source Location on Flexible Array Curvature Estimation with a Maximum Lag-One Spatial Coherence Metric to be presented by Jiaxin Zhang and Prof. Bell in the session entitled MPA: Advancements in Photoacoustic Imaging Systems (Poster)  on Wednesday, September 25, 2024, 2:30 – 4:30 PM
  4. Multispectral Photoacoustic Imaging of Breast Cancer Tissue to be presented by Junhao Zhang (co-authored with Junior Arroyo) in the session entitled Photoacoustics (NPA) 2 (Lecture) on Thursday, September 26, 2024, 8:30 – 10:00 AM
  5. Coherence-Based Optimization Using Cumulative Spatial Lags to Estimate Sound Speed in Plane Wave Images of Coherent and Incoherent Targets to be presented by Jiaxin Zhang in the session entitled MBB: Coherence Factor & Diverging Wave Imaging (Lecture) on Thursday, September 26, 2024, 10:30 AM – 12:00 PM

In addition, Md Ashikuzzaman will be presenting a poster on his solution to the a-MEM challenge.

Congrats to Jiaxin, Manik, Mahban, Junhao, Junior, Ashik, and Prof. Bell!

Symposium website: https://2024.ieee-uffc-js.org/

(updated September 19, 2024)

Welcome to Jamie, Haben, Jahin, and Julia

Welcome to four new PULSE Lab PhD students who recently joined us:

Jamie Enslein
PhD Student, ECE
B.S., Bioengineering – University of California, Berkeley

Haben Gebrekidan
PhD Student, ECE
M.Sc., Electrical Engineering – Syracuse University
B.Sc., Electromechanical Engineering – Addis Ababa Science and Technology University, Ethiopia

MD Jahin Alam
PhD Student, ECE
B.Sc., Electrical and Electronic Engineering – Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), Dhaka, Bangladesh

Julia Drabek
PhD Student, ECE
B.S., Electrical Engineering – New York University Abu Dhabi

Welcome Jamie, Haben, Jahin, and Julia! We wish you all the best as you each chart your course while undertaking this new PhD journey.

Journal Paper Accepted to IEEE T-UFFC

Congratulations to Md Ashikuzzaman! His first-author paper entitled MixTURE: L1-Norm-Based Mixed Second-Order Continuity in Strain Tensor Ultrasound Elastography was accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control.

This work is the first to introduce an L1-norm-based second-order regularizer in a mechanically-inspired total strain tensor imaging framework named — L1-norm Mixed derivative for Total UltRasound Elastography — or, L1-MixTURE when abbreviated. Displacement tracking of ultrasound images can be implemented by optimizing a cost function consisting of a data term, a mechanical congruency term, and first- and second-order continuity terms. This approach recently provided a promising solution to two-dimensional axial and lateral displacement tracking in ultrasound strain elastography. However, the associated second-order regularizer only considers the unmixed second derivatives and disregards the mixed derivatives, thereby providing suboptimal noise suppression and limiting possibilities for total strain tensor imaging. We improved axial, lateral, axial shear, and lateral shear strain estimation quality by formulating and optimizing a novel L1-norm-based second-order regularizer that penalizes both mixed and unmixed displacement derivatives. Results are promising to advance the state-of-the-art in elastography-guided diagnostic and interventional decisions.

Citation: Ashikuzzaman M, Sharma A, Venkatayogi N, Oluyemi E, Myers K, Ambinder E, Rivaz H, Bell MAL, MixTURE: L1-Norm-Based Mixed Second-Order Continuity in Strain Tensor Ultrasound Elastography, IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control (accepted August 13, 2024) [pdf]

Journal Paper Accepted to Biophotonics Discovery

Congratulations to Junior Arroyo! His first-author paper entitled Predictive model for laser-induced tissue necrosis with immunohistochemistry validation was accepted for publication in the newest SPIE journal, Biophotonics Discovery.

This work is the first to demonstrate a unified theoretical, computational, and experimental approach with quantitative immunohistochemistry (IHC) validation to determine laser safety for biological tissues other than skin or eyes. Although photoacoustic imaging has the potential to provide critical guidance in surgical interventions, its widespread use is challenged by the absence of applicable safety guidelines across diverse target tissues. Maximum permissible exposure (MPE) guidelines currently focus solely on skin and eyes. Results are promising to provide tissue-specific MPE guidelines to maintain healthy liver tissue during laser-based optical and photoacoustic surgeries and interventions. The presented approach and associated outcomes are promising for the introduction of tissue-specific safety guidelines for photoacoustic imaging and other optics-based imaging technologies that are designed to maximize signal-to-noise ratios while being designated as safe for patient use. In addition, the presented simulation framework and corresponding experimental protocols may be applied to other internal organs to achieve similar benefits.

Citation: Arroyo J, Sharma A, Zhang J, Bell MAL, Predictive model for laser-induced tissue necrosis with immunohistochemistry validation, Biophotonics Discovery 1(2):025003, 2024 [pdf]

Prof. Bell Delivered the NSF Waterman Awardee Distinguished Lecture

Prof. Bell delivered the the NSF Waterman Awardee Distinguished Lecture on Equitable Medical Imaging on August 21, 2024, followed by Q&A with attendees. The session was live-streamed and recorded.

The recorded lecture is also available at the bottom of the webinar event page at this link: https://players.brightcove.net/679256133001/NkgrDczuol_default/index.html?videoId=6360892996112. This version has no lag in start time and includes videos of the co-hosts and presenter as they speak, but the upper right corner of slides are blocked by each speakers’ videos. The copy above has no speaker videos and as a result, none of the slides are blocked.

Welcome to Mawia Khairalseed, PhD

The PULSE Lab is thrilled to welcome research faculty member Dr. Mawia Khairalseed, who joins us with a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Cairo University. Dr. Khairalseed has held multiple research positions at UT Dallas and Texas A&M University. Prior to these research appointments, Dr. Khairalseed was an Associate Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the Sudan University of Science and Technology in Khartoum, Sudan. He additionally served as Chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering, Sudan University of Science and Technology from 2012-2016.

Welcome Dr. Khairalseed!

Prof. Bell Speaks to PCAST

Prof. Bell delivered an outstanding invited talk to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) on July 11, 2024. She was the third speaker on a panel of three impressive back-to-back talks, presenting in the “Research and Researchers on the Horizon” session, followed by Q&A with PCAST. The session was live-streamed and recorded.

Agenda: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/PUBLIC-AGENDA-JULY-2024-MEETING_as-of-28June-1.pdf
Speaker bios: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Speaker-Bios-Public-Sessions-July-11-2024.pdf

PULSE Lab Wins TEDCO MII Award

The PULSE Lab received a $115,000 TEDCO Technology Assessment Award from the Maryland Innovation Initiative to commercialize technology related to peripheral nerve injury. The project title is “A Non-invasive Imaging Device to Modernize Treatment of Peripheral Nerve Injury.”

Peripheral neuropathy occurs when the nerves that are located outside of the brain and spinal cord (peripheral nerves) are damaged. Causes of peripheral nerve injuries include injury from
accidents (sports), injury from medical conditions (autoimmune disease, diabetes, Guillain-Barre syndrome and carpal tunnel syndrome), and injury during surgical interventions. Severe nerve
injuries affect the sensory and motor functions, and lead to devastating impact on patient’s quality of life. The main treatment method of severe nerve damage is through nerve reconstruction
surgery. 250K patients are affected by peripheral nerve injury each year in the US and 150K are managed surgically. The choice of technique for surgical nerve repair is largely determined by nerve injury location. During surgery however, it is very difficult to establish the exact location and extent of a nerve injury. Viopsy will be the first commercially available device to quantify peripheral nerve viability intraoperatively and monitor nerve regeneration prior to target organ reinnervation. In doing so, this device is anticipated to transform the practice of peripheral nerve surgery. This work will be completed as a collaboration among Prof. Bell (PI), Sami Tuffaha, MD (co-investigator), and Shri Prabha Shivram (research specialist).

The PULSE Lab’s pioneering publications in this area include:

  • Graham MT, Sharma A, Padovano WM, Suresh V, Chiu A, Thon SM, Tuffaha S, Bell MAL, Optical absorption spectra and corresponding in vivo photoacoustic visualization of exposed peripheral nerves, Journal of Biomedical Optics, 28(9):097001, 2023 [pdf]
  • Graham M, von Guionneau N, Tuffaha S, Bell MAL, Design and optimization of simulated light delivery systems for photoacoustic assessment of peripheral nerve injury, Proceedings of SPIE Photonics West, San Francisco, CA, January 22-27, 2022 [pdf]

The foundational research to support this work was initially funded by a Johns Hopkins Discovery Award.

Welcome to Taylor, Rhea, and Yanlin

Welcome to the following new PULSE Lab members, including one master’s student and two undergraduate students, who have joined us this summer to work on various projects.

Undergraduate Students

Taylor Folk
Bioengineering
Harvard University, Class of 2026
NSF-funded REU student

Rhea Rasquinha
Biomedical Engineering
Brown University, Class of 2025
NSF-funded REU student

Masters Student

Yanlin Wu
M.S. Student
Johns Hopkins University, Class of 2026

Welcome Taylor, Rhea, and Yanlin!

Peer-Reviewed Paper Accepted to IEEE ISBI

Congratulations to Md Ashikuzzaman! His paper, Deep learning-based displacement tracking for post-stroke myofascial shear strain quantification, was accepted for presentation at the IEEE International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging (ISBI),  Athens, Greece, May 27-30, 2024. This peer-reviewed paper was also accepted for inclusion in the conference proceedings.

Congrats again on this significant achievement and milestone, Ashik!

Citation: M Ashikuzzaman, J Huang, S Bonwit, A Etemadimanesh, P Raghavan, MAL Bell, Deep learning-based displacement tracking for post-stroke myofascial shear strain quantification, IEEE International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging (ISBI),  Athens, Greece, May 27-30, 2024

Prof. Bell Wins NSF Alan T. Waterman Award

Prof. Muyinatu Bell receiving Waterman Award medal from NSF Director Dr. Panchanathan

Prof. Bell was selected to receive the 2024 NSF Alan T. Waterman Award, which is the highest honor in the United States offered to early-career scientists and engineers. The award comes with a medal and $1,000,000 to advance each recipient’s research. Prof. Bell is the first ever recipient from Johns Hopkins University in the award’s 48-year history, which is a significant achievement for America’s first research university. Prof. Bell is also one of few women and Black scientists to receive the award. There is a lot of rich history behind this win.

When receiving this award, Prof. Bell was recognized “for  pioneering innovations in ultrasound and photoacoustic imaging, particularly coherence-based beamforming, photoacoustic-guided surgery, and deep learning. These innovations cross interdisciplinary boundaries to improve medical image quality in patients, reduce patient deaths during surgery, inspire new surgical designs, and provide more equitable healthcare.” Congratulations to Prof. Bell!

Waterman Awardee Distinguished Lecture (delivered August 21, 2024)

The recorded lecture is also available at the bottom of the lecture event page at this link: https://players.brightcove.net/679256133001/NkgrDczuol_default/index.html?videoId=6360892996112

JHU Hub Announcement

NSF Press Release

Whiting School of Engineering Announcement

Malone Center Announcement

BTHS Alumni News

Paper Published in Nature Communications Medicine

Congratulations to former PULSE Lab postdoc Lingyi Zhao! Her first-author journal paper entitled Detection of COVID-19 features in lung ultrasound images using deep neural networks was published in Communications Medicine, which is a Nature Publishing group journal). This paper is the first to demonstrate that simulations can be used to train deep neural networks to detect COVID-19 features in lung ultrasound images of patients. Therefore, DNNs trained with simulated and in vivo data are promising alternatives to training with only real or only simulated data when segmenting in vivo COVID-19 lung ultrasound features.

We offer public access (https://gitlab.com/pulselab/covid19) to the datasets and code described in the paper “Detection of COVID-19 features in lung ultrasound images using deep neural networks.” Communications Medicine, 2024. https://www.nature.com/articles/s43856-024-00463-5.

Access includes simulated B-mode images containing A-line, B-line, and consolidation features with paired ground truth segmentations, as well as our segmentation annotations of publicly available point of care ultrasound (POCUS) datasets (originating from https://github.com/jannisborn/covid19_ultrasound).

If you find our datasets and/or code useful, please cite the following references:

  1. L. Zhao, T.C. Fong, M.A.L. Bell, “Detection of COVID-19 features in lung ultrasound images using deep neural networks”, Communications Medicine, 2024. https://www.nature.com/articles/s43856-024-00463-5
  2. L. Zhao, M.A.L. Bell (2023). Code for the paper “Detection of COVID-19 features in lung ultrasound images using deep neural networks”. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10324042

JHU Hub Press Release

MSN

Tech Times

Three Abstracts Accepted to SPIE



Three PULSE Lab abstracts were accepted to SPIE conferences this year.

SPIE Photonics West took place January 27- February 1, 2024, and the following work was presented by Jiaxin Zhang.

SPIE Medical Imaging is taking place February 18-22, 2024, and the following work was presented by Md Ashikuzzaman. 

In addition to the above papers, Prof. Bell was invited to be a session chair at SPIE Photonics West for the the Advanced Biomedical and Clinical Diagnostic and Surgical Guidance Systems XXII, Session 6: Diffuse Reflectance Spectroscopy on January 28th from 11:00 AM-12:20 PM PST.

Welcome to Deepak, Pankaj, and Namitha

The PULSE Lab welcomes two postdocs, Deepak Raina (co-advised by Prof. Axel Krieger) and Pankaj Warbal. We also welcome PhD student Namitha Guruprasad.

Categories All

Prof. Bell Elected Fellow of Optica (formerly OSA)

Congratulations to Prof. Bell on being elected as a Fellow of Optica!

Optica, formerly the Optical Society of America (OSA), is the oldest preeminent professional society in the field of optics and photonics, uniting and educating scientists, engineers, educators, technicians and business leaders, with over 22,000 members from more than 180 countries and 45 Nobel Laureates in its ranks.

Optica Fellows are members who have served with distinction in the advancement of optics and photonics through distinguished contributions to education, research, engineering, business, and society. Fellows are selected by the society’s board of directors for this distinction, recognition, and honor, which is annually limited to approximately 0.5% of the society’s membership total at the time of election. 

Prof. Bell is honored specifically  “for pioneering contributions to photoacoustic imaging techniques and applications for surgical guidance.”

Optica News Release (Prof. Bell appears under surname “Lediju Bell” in this news release)

Meet the 2024 Fellows

ECE Department News

Malone Center Announcement

Optics and Photonics News

PULSE Lab Research Featured on CNN

Research conducted by PULSE Lab visiting PhD student, Guilherme S. P. Fernandes, and co-advisor, Prof. Muyinatu Bell, is featured on CNN.

The topic of the feature is an algorithm that Prof. Bell invented as a graduate student, which is now revealing capabilities to address skin tone bias in photoacoustic imaging. When using this technique to image through skin with light, darker skin tones produce more acoustic clutter than lighter skin tones, which introduces unwanted biases (e.g., Black patients have worse images than white patients, leading to a disparity in the ability to see the important content needed to make an accurate diagnosis). The novel and innovative algorithm, termed short-lag spatial coherence (SLSC) beamforming, makes clearer pictures for all patients, regardless of skin tone. Prof. Bell collaborated with Prof. Theo Pavan and colleagues at the University of São Paulo in Brazil to test this algorithm on multiple volunteers, and the PULSE Lab hosted Guilherme over the past year to finalize this work, leading to the publication Mitigating skin tone bias in linear array in vivo photoacoustic imaging with short-lag spatial coherence beamforming.

SLSC beamforming was previously shown to reduce acoustic clutter in cardiac ultrasound images and in abdominal ultrasound images of patients with higher body mass indexes. The technique and its derivatives can also be used to clarify the fluid vs. solid content of indeterminate breast masses surrounded by dense breast tissue, thereby reducing unnecessary procedures and follow-ups when trying to detect breast cancer. Additional use cases include clarifying anatomical details in photoacoustic-guided surgery. These multiple examples demonstrate the expansive power, potential, and capabilities of designing more equitable imaging and healthcare technologies that serve a wider range of our global patient population.

CNN

JHU Hub

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Know Your Rights Camp

News One

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Physics World

Prof. Bell Receives NIH R01 Grant

Prof. Bell received a $1.5M NIH R01 grant from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering to support our project entitled, Photoacoustic Image Guidance of Hysterectomies. This project is motivated by the clinical challenges surrounding ureteral injury during hysterectomies, due to the close proximity of uterine arteries (which must be severed) and ureters (which must be preserved). Complications from accidental ureteral injuries include extensive repeat surgeries, complete kidney failure, sepsis, acute renal insufficiency, and patient death. The goal of this project is to establish optimal parameters to advance photoacoustic technology toward differentiation of ureters, uterine arteries, and tool tips during hysterectomies. This work will be completed in collaboration with primary co-investigator, Karen Wang, MD.

Four of our pioneering publications in this area include:

  • Wiacek A, Wang KC, Wu H, Bell MAL, Photoacoustic-guided laparoscopic and open hysterectomy procedures demonstrated with human cadavers, IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, 40(12):3279-3292, 2021 [pdf]
  • Wiacek A, Wang KC, Wu H, Bell MAL, Parking sensor-inspired approach to photoacoustic-guided hysterectomy demonstrated with human cadavers, Proceedings of SPIE Photonics West, San Francisco, CA, March 6-11, 2021 [pdf]
  • Wiacek A, Wang KC, Bell MAL, Dual-wavelength photoacoustic imaging for guidance of hysterectomy procedures, Proceedings of SPIE Photonics West, San Francisco, CA, February 1-6, 2020 [pdf]
  • Wiacek A, Wang K, Bell MAL, Techniques to distinguish the ureter from the uterine artery in photoacoustic-guided hysterectomies, Proceedings of SPIE Photonics West, San Francisco, CA, February 2-7, 2019 [pdf]

This work was initially funded by a Johns Hopkins Discovery Award.

JHU Malone Center Announcement

Welcome to Seven New PULSE Lab Students: Mahban, Manik, Gareth, Nethra, Junhao, Nidhi, and Neil

Welcome to the following new PULSE Lab members, including five graduate students and two undergraduate students, who have joined us this fall to work on various projects.

Graduate Students

MahbanG-150x150.jpg
Mahban Gholijafari
PhD Student, ECE
B.Sc., Electrical and Control Engineering, Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic), Tehran, Iran

Manik-150x150.png
Manik Kakkar
PhD Student, ECE
M.Sc., Physics,  Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar, India
B.Sc. (HS), Physics & Electronics, Punjab University, Chandigarh, India 

GarethKeene-150x150.jpg
Gareth Keene
PhD Student, ECE
B.S., Electrical Engineering – Pennsylvania State University 

NethraVenkatayogi-150x150.jpg
Nethra Venkatayogi
PhD Student, CS
B.S., Biomedical Engineering – University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, US

JunhaoZhang-150x150.png
Junhao Zhang
PhD Student, ECE
M.S., Mechanical Engineering – ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
B.S., Physics & Mechanical Engineering – University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, US

Undergraduate Students

Nidhi Batra
Electrical Engineering (minor in Computer Integrated Surgery)
Johns Hopkins University, Class of 2025
 

Neil Mahto
Computational Neuroscience and English Double Major
Johns Hopkins University, Class of 2027

Welcome Neil, Nidhi, Junhao, Nethra, Gareth, Manik, and Mahban!

Welcome to Summer Undergraduate Students Sara, Ahmed, and Adah

Welcome to Sara Ibrahim, Ahmed El-Desoky, and Adah Harding! Sara, Ahmed, and Adah are joining the PULSE Lab this summer as part of the LCSR Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program in Computational Sensing and Medical Robotics. They are pursuing undergraduate degrees at various universities across the country, with majors and minors in mechanical engineering, biology, computer science, chemistry, and music.

Sara Ibrahim

  • Mechanical Engineering (Computer Science certificate)
  • University of Texas at Austin, Class of 2026
  • NSF-funded REU student

Adah Harding

  • Mechanical Engineering (double minor in Biology and Music)
  • University of Maryland Baltimore County, Class of 2026
  • NSF-funded REU student

Ahmed El-Desoky

  • Computer Science and Biology (minor in Chemistry)
  • Xavier University of Louisiana, Class of 2024
  • NSF-funded REU student

Sara, Ahmed, and Adah will be working with us for 10 weeks throughout the summer on projects in the areas of ultrasound imaging, photoacoustic imaging, and deep learning.

PhD Hooding Ceremony for Alycen Wiacek, Michelle Graham, and Eduardo Gonzalez

PULSE Lab alums Alycen Wiacek, PhD (ECE), Michelle Graham, PhD (ECE), and Eduardo Gonzalez, PhD (BME) returned to the Johns Hopkins University campus for the Whiting School of Engineering doctoral hooding ceremony on Monday, May 22, 2023. Current PULSE Lab members, families, and friends of the graduates attended the joyous celebration. Eduardo Gonzalez, PhD additionally participated in the the School of Medicine doctoral hooding ceremony for BME PhD graduates two days later on Wednesday, May 24, 2023.

We are thrilled for these bright and audacious PULSE Lab PhD pioneers, and we wish them well in all of their future endeavors!

Three Abstracts Accepted to IEEE IUS 2023 & Invited Talk by Prof. Bell


The following PULSE Lab abstracts have been accepted for presentation during the 2023 IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium (IUS) to be held September 3-8, 2023 in Montreal, Canada.

  1. Demonstrating the Impact of Wavelength and Skin Tone on Photoacoustic Breast Imaging to be presented by Guilherme S. Pilotto Fernandes in the Poster session “A2P-17: MPA-P: Clinical Applications of Photoacoustic Imaging” on Sep 4, 9:30 AM to 4:30 PM EDT
  2. Real-Time Coherence Imaging of Suspicious Breast Masses to be presented by Arunima Sharma in the Lecture session “C1L-01: MIM: Novel Applications of Ultrasound Imaging” on Sep 6, 8:00 AM to 9:30 AM EDT
  3. Application of CohereNet to Photoacoustic Data for Non-Invasive in Vivo Subcutaneous Imaging to be presented by José Antonio Timaná Torres in the Poster session “C2P-20: MPA-P: Photoacoustic Image Processing” on Sep 6, 9:30 AM to 4:30 PM EDT

Congrats to Arunima, Guilherme, and José!

In addition to co-authoring the above publications:

Symposium website: https://2023.ieee-ius.org/

(This post was updated on September 4, 2023)

Prof. Bell Receives JHU Discovery Award

Dr. Muyinatu Bell and plastic and reconstructive surgeon collaborator Dr. Sami Tuffaha were among the 35 interdisciplinary faculty teams at Johns Hopkins selected to receive one of the 2023 JHU Discovery Awards. This award is designed to support cross-divisional research teams who are poised to arrive at important discoveries or creative works. The expectation is that these awards will spark new, synergistic interactions between investigators across the institution and lead to work of the highest quality and impact. This award will support their research topic of “Photoacoustic Assessment of Peripheral Nerve Injury.”

JHU Office of Research Announcement

JHU Hub Announcement

Welcome to Md Ashikuzzaman

The PULSE Lab welcomes Md Ashikuzzaman (Ashk). Ashik is a postdoctoral fellow who recently completed his PhD at Concordia University. We are thrilled to have him as a the newest member of our team.

Welcome Ashik!

Prof. Bell Elected SPIE Fellow

Congratulations to Prof. Bell on being elected as a Fellow of SPIE! SPIE Fellows are are members of distinction who have made significant scientific and technical contributions in the multidisciplinary fields of optics, photonics, and imaging and are honored for their technical achievements, service to the general optics community, and service to SPIE.

Prof. Bell was recognized for her “achievements in photoacoustic imaging techniques and applications for surgical guidance.” She is a regular attendee and author of two SPIE communities and was honored as a new 2023 Fellow within both communities. Prof. Bell received her SPIE Fellow pin and certificate at SPIE Photonics West, presented by Symposium Chair Jennifer Barton and SPIE President Bernard Kress. Three weeks later, she was honored with a Fellow certificate presentation at SPIE Medical Imaging, delivered by Symposium Chair Despina Kontos.

New SPIE Fellows Announcement

WSE Announcement

Khadijat Kokumo Wins SPIE Best Paper Award

Congratulations to PULSE Lab summer undergraduate student Khadijat Kokumo, who won the Best Paper Award runner up at the 2023 SPIE Physics of Medical Imaging conference! This conference features a student paper award specifically to recognize outstanding papers in development and application of medical imaging and diagnosis.

Khadijat’s first-author paper, entitled “Theoretical basis and experimental validation of harmonic coherence-based ultrasound imaging for breast mass diagnosis,” describes and summarizes research she completed in summer 2022 as a CSMR REU student from Northwestern University.

The award is sponsored by Konica Minolta, and it was presented to Khadijat by John Sabol from Konica Minolta Healthcare Americas, Inc. Lifeng Yu (Mayo Clinic) and Rebecca Fahrig (Siemens Healthcare GmBH) are the conference chairs. Prof. Bell is the senior author of the paper.

Four Abstracts Accepted to SPIE



Two PULSE Lab abstracts were accepted to SPIE conferences this year.

SPIE Photonics West is taking place January 28- February 2, 2023, and the following work was presented by Jiaxin Zhang.

SPIE Medical Imaging will take place February 20-24, 2023, and the following work will be presented by Khadijat Kokumo. 

The PULSE Lab also contributed to the following two collaborative works, which will also be presented at SPIE Medical Imaging.

In addition to the above papers, Prof. Bell was invited to be a session chair at SPIE Photonics West for the the Advanced Biomedical and Clinical Diagnostic and Surgical Guidance Systems XXI, Session 8: Novel Techniques on January 29th from 3:40-5:20 PM PST and for Multiscale Imaging and Spectroscopy IV, Session 7: Emerging Sources of Multiscale Contrast II on January 29th from 1:20 – 3:10 PM PST.

Prof. Bell Wins IEEE Ultrasonics Early Career Investigator Award

Prof. Muyinatu Bell (center) with UFFC-S Awards Chair, Prof. Jafar Sanie (left) and UFFC-S President, Prof. Mark Schaffer (right).

Prof. Bell was selected to receive the 2022 IEEE Ultrasonics Early Career Investigator Award, which was announced on  at the IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium in Venice, Italy. This award recognize the achievements of a young researcher in the area of ultrasonics and its applications. Prof. Bell was recognized for “pioneering contributions to spatial coherence beamforming theory and deep learning methods for ultrasound and photoacoustic image formation.”

WSE Announcement

Prof. Bell Wins $1.15M Science Diversity Leadership Award

Congratulations to Prof. Bell on winning the inaugural Science Diversity Leadership Award! 

This $1.15 million award is offered by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) in partnership with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to launch this program. The award recognizes and furthers the leadership and scientific accomplishments of excellent biomedical researchers who—through their outreach, mentoring, and teaching—have a record of promoting diversity, equity and inclusion in their scientific fields. Recipients will additionally connect with each other and international scientific leaders through
gatherings over the course of the five years.

CZI Announcement

JHU Hub Announcement

Johns Hopkins Office of the Provost

Prof. Bell Wins Johns Hopkins Catalyst Award

Congratulations to Prof. Bell on winning the 2022 Johns Hopkins Catalyst Award! 

Awarded to 38 early-career faculty this year, across all divisions within Johns Hopkins, the Catalyst Award honors the accomplishments, creativity, originality, and academic impact of its recipients. The award provides a $75,000 grant to conduct preliminary studies with the eventual goal of redefining laser safety for photoacoustic-guided liver surgery. In addition to the grant, the award comes with mentoring opportunities and institutional recognition.  

Two of our pioneering journal publications in this area include:

  • Huang J, Wiacek A,Kempski KM, Palmer T, Izzi J, Beck S, Bell MAL, Empirical Assessment of Laser Safety for Photoacoustic-Guided Liver Surgeries, Biomedical Optics Express, 12, 1205-1216, 2021 [pdf]
  • Kempski K, Wiacek A, Graham M, González E, Goodson B, Allman D, Palmer J, Hou H, Beck S, He J, Bell MAL, In vivo photoacoustic imaging of major blood vessels in the pancreas and liver during surgery, Journal of Biomedical Optics, 24(12):121905, 2019 [pdf]

It is a huge honor to be a recipient of this award, and all recipients will be celebrated at a university-sponsored event taking place on October 20, 2022! Congrats again to Prof. Bell! 

JHU Hub Announcement

HEMI Announcement

Seven Abstracts Accepted to IEEE IUS 2022


The following PULSE Lab abstracts were accepted for presentation during the 2022 IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium (IUS) to be held October 10-13, 2022 in Venice, Italy.

  1. Phocospace: An Open-Source Simulation Package to Implement Photoacoustic Spatial Coherence Theory to be presented by Prof. Bell in the session entitled Imaging Methods and Quality Assessment Oct 12, 11:00-11:18am CEST
  2. A Flexible Array Transducer for Photoacoustic-Guided Surgery to be presented by Jiaxin Zhang in the session entitled Photoacoustic Imaging II Oct 12, 12:12-12:30pm CEST
  3. Binary and Random Inputs to Rapidly Identify Overfitting of Deep Neural Networks Trained to Output Ultrasound Images to be presented by Jiaxin Zhang in the session entitled Image Formation Oct 11,
  4. Distinguishing Fluid and Solid Breast Masses with Fundamental and Harmonic Amplitude- and Coherence-Based Ultrasound Beamforming to be presented by Arunima Sharma in the session entitled Ultrasound Methods for Characterizing Cancer and Monitoring Therapy II Oct 11,
  5. COVID-19 Feature Detection with Deep Neural Networks Trained on Simulated Lung Ultrasound B-mode Images to be presented by Lingyi Zhao in the session entitled Lung Ultrasound Oct 13,
  6. Predicting Generalized Contrast-to-Noise Ratios in Frame-Averaged Photoacoustic Images to be presented by Mardava Gubbi in the session entitled Ultrasound Devices, Systems and Methods II Oct 12, and
  7. Impact of Skin Pigmentation on Photoacoustic Imaging Using Linear Array Transducer: A Pilot In Vivo Study to be presented by Guilherme S. Pilotto Fernandes in the session entitled Photoacoustic Imaging and Instrumentation Oct 13,

Congrats to Prof. Bell, Jiaxin, Arunima, Lingyi, Mardava, and Guilherme!

In addition to co-authoring the above publications:

  •  Prof. Bell will chair the session entitled MBB – Beamforming III Thursday, October 13

Symposium website: https://2022.ieee-ius.org/

Prof. Bell Receives NIH R01 Grant

Prof. Bell received a $1.4M NIH R01 grant from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering to support our project entitled, Minimizing Uncertainty in Breast Ultrasound Imaging with Real-Time Coherence-Based Beamforming. This project is motivated by the clinical challenges surrounding ultrasound images yielding inconclusive results in a subset of patients, necessitating biopsies, aspirations, or follow-up imaging, which increase patient anxiety and places additional burdens on the time available for clinical care and the resource allocations of our healthcare system. The goal of this project is to develop new, real-time ultrasound imaging technology that will simplify clinical workflows by distinguishing fluid-filled masses from solid masses and from complex cystic and solid masses, which all appear hypoechoic in traditional ultrasound B-mode images. This work will be completed in collaboration with breast radiologists Eniola Oluyemi, MD, Kelly Myers, MD, Emily Ambinder, MD, and Lisa Mullen, MD.

Three of our pioneering journal publications in this area include:

  • Wiacek A, Rindal OMH, Falomo E, Myers K, Fabrega-Foster K, Harvey S, Bell MAL, Robust Short-Lag Spatial Coherence Imaging of Breast Ultrasound Data: Initial Clinical Results, IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control, 66(3):527-540, 2019 [pdf]
  • Wiacek A, Oluyemi E, Myers K, Mullen L, Bell MAL, Coherence-based beamforming increases the diagnostic certainty of distinguishing fluid from solid masses in breast ultrasound exams, Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology, 46(6):1380-1394, 2020 [pdf]
  • Wiacek A, González E, Bell MAL, CohereNet: A Deep Learning Architecture for Ultrasound Spatial Correlation Estimation and Coherence-Based Beamforming, IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control, 67(12):2574-2583, 2020 [featured on journal cover] [pdf]

This work has also been featured in the following articles and press releases:

We additionally have a pending patent for these ideas.

JHU Hub Announcement

Eduardo González Successfully Defended His PhD Dissertation

Congratulations to PULSE Lab member Dr. Eduardo González! He successfully defended his PhD dissertation on September 26, 2022. His defense presentation was entitled Ultrasound and Photoacoustic Techniques for Surgical Guidance Inside and Around the Spine. Eduardo intends to pursue a career in industry, starting with post-academic training with Philips (one of the three major manufacturers of ultrasound imaging systems), with an offer to start in mid-October.

Paper Accepted to Journal of Biomedical Optics

Congratulations to Eduardo González! His first author paper entitled, Dual-wavelength photoacoustic atlas method to estimate fractional methylene blue and hemoglobin contents, was accepted to the Journal of Biomedical Optics.

This work discusses a novel approach to estimate concentration levels from a mixture of two photoacoustic-sensitive materials after only two laser wavelength emissions. The work builds on our previously proposed acoustic atlas alternative to spectral unmixing, and it is the first to present an acoustic-based photoacoustic estimator that relies on training sets to estimate concentration levels from mixtures of photoacoustic-sensitive materials. Results are promising for real-time monitoring of the concentration of contrast agents in the operating room.

Citations:

González EA, Bell MAL, Dual-wavelength photoacoustic atlas method to estimate fractional methylene blue and hemoglobin contents, Journal of Biomedical Optics, 27(9):096002, 2022 [pdf]

González EA, Graham CA, Bell MAL, Acoustic frequency-based approach for identification of photoacoustic surgical biomarkers, Frontiers in Photonics, 2, 2021 [pdf]

Related News:

Journal Paper Accepted to Frontiers in Photonics

Welcome to Visiting Graduate Student Guilherme

Welcome to Guilherme S. P. Fernandes! Guilherme is joining the PULSE Lab for one year as a visiting PhD student from the University of São Paulo, advised by Prof. Theo Pavan. His visit is supported by the Brazilian foundation FAPSEP.


Guilherme S. P. Fernandes

Visiting PhD Student from University of São Paulo, Brazil

B.S., Medical Physics, University of São Paulo, Ribeirao Preto – SP, Brazil

Guilherme and Prof. Bell initially met at SPIE Photonics West in 2020 when Prof. Bell visited his research poster.

Welcome to Summer Undergraduate Student Khadijat Kokumo

Welcome to Khadijat Kokumo! Khadijat is joining the PULSE Lab this summer as part of the LCSR Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program in Computational Sensing and Medical Robotics. She hails from Atlanta, GA and is pursuing an undergraduate degree at Northwestern University.

 
Khadijat Kokumo

  • Northwestern University (Evanston, IL)
  • Biomedical Engineering major, Class of 2024
  • Computer Science minor
  • NSF-funded REU student

Khadijat will be working with us for 10 weeks throughout the summer on an exciting project in the area of spatial coherence ultrasound beamforming.

Alycen Wiacek Successfully Defended Her PhD Dissertation

Congratulations to PULSE Lab member Dr. Alycen Wiacek! She successfully defended her PhD dissertation on June 1, 2021. Her defense presentation was entitled Coherence-Based Ultrasound and Photoacoustic Imaging with Applications in Breast Mass Diagnosis and Hysterectomy Guidance. Alycen secured a tenure-track Assistant Professor position at her alma mater, Oakland University, and her post-graduate plans are to assume this new position in Fall 2022.

Prof. Bell Installed as the John C. Malone Professor

Prof. Bell was installed as the John C. Malone Professor on Monday, May 16, 2022. The John C. Malone Professorship was endowed through the generosity of John C. Malone ’64, ’69 to support outstanding Whiting School faculty members within the Malone Center for Engineering in Healthcare. Family, friends, colleagues, and students gathered together to celebrate this momentous occasion. The event was live-streamed, and the recording is available on YouTube.

Journal Paper Accepted to IEEE TUFFC

Congratulations to Mardava Gubbi! His first-author paper entitled Theoretical Framework to Predict Generalized Contrast-to-Noise Ratios of Photoacoustic Images With Applications to Computer Vision was accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control.

This work is the first to the first to present a novel framework to establish relationships among photoacoustic imaging system parameters, image quality, and computer vision-based task performance. Our framework leverages gCNR to quantify the relationships between system parameters (e.g., channel SNR, laser energy) and photoacoustic image quality. Within this framework, we present a theoretical derivation of gCNR predictions based on using the statistics of the target and background signal powers, then validate these predictions on simulated, experimental, and in vivo data. This framework was then leveraged to quantify the accuracy of a photoacoustic target segmentation algorithm as a function of gCNR and demonstrate the robustness of gCNR to thresholding, with possible extensions to other computer vision-based tasks (e.g., target tracking and image classification) and to improve the overall photoacoustic imaging system design process.

Citation: Gubbi MR, Gonzalez EA, Bell MAL,Theoretical Framework to Predict Generalized Contrast-to-Noise Ratios of Photoacoustic Images With Applications to Computer Vision,” IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control, 69(6):2098-2114, 2022 [pdf]

Arun Nair, PhD Returns for Doctoral Hooding Ceremony

We are thrilled to welcome PULSE Lab alum Arun Nair, PhD back to the university campus for the Whiting School of Engineering doctoral hooding ceremony! Congratulations to Dr. Nair on this momentous occasion!

Arun with Prof. Bell during the precessional
Arun with co-advisors Profs. Tran and Bell

Mardava Completed the ECE Department Preliminary Research Proposal Seminar

Congratulations to Mardava Gubbi on his successful completion of the ECE Department preliminary thesis research proposal and seminar requirement!

The topics discussed in Mardava’s seminar are summarized in the following peer-reviewed publications:

  1. Gubbi MR, Bell MAL, Deep Learning-Based Photoacoustic Visual Servoing: Using Outputs from Raw Sensor Data as Inputs to a Robot Controller, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Xi’an, China, May 30 – June 5, 2021 [pdf]
  2. Gubbi MR, Gonzalez EA, Bell MAL,Theoretical Framework to Predict Generalized Contrast-to-Noise Ratios of Photoacoustic Images With Applications to Computer Vision,” IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control, 69(6):2098-2114, 2022 [pdf]
  3. Kempski KM, Graham MT, Gubbi MR, Palmer T, Bell MAL, Application of the generalized contrast-to-noise ratio to assess photoacoustic image quality, Biomedical Optics Express, 11(7), 3684-3698, 2020 [pdf]
  4. Graham M, Assis F, Allman D, Wiacek A, González E, Gubbi M, Dong J, Hou H, Beck S, Chrispin J, Bell MAL, In vivo demonstration of photoacoustic image guidance and robotic visual servoing for cardiac catheter-based interventions, IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, 39(4):1015-1029, 2020 [pdf]

Alycen Wiacek Wins AIUM New Investigator Award

Congratulations to Alycen Wiacek for winning the New Investigator Award from the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine (AIUM)! Alycen was selected to present her research in the New Investigator Scientific Session Plenary at the AIUM 2022 Annual Meeting. She discussed her three first-author papers on the clinical implications of spatial coherence features for breast ultrasound:

  1. Wiacek A, Rindal OMH, Falomo E, Myers K, Fabrega-Foster K, Harvey S, Bell MAL, Robust Short-Lag Spatial Coherence Imaging of Breast Ultrasound Data: Initial Clinical Results, IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control, 66(3):527-540, 2019 [pdf]
  2. Wiacek A, Oluyemi E, Myers K, Mullen L, Bell MAL, Coherence-based beamforming increases the diagnostic certainty of distinguishing fluid from solid masses in breast ultrasound exams, Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology, 46(6):1380-1394, 2020 [pdf]
  3. Wiacek A, Oluyemi E, Myers K, Mullen L, Bell MAL, Coherence-based beamforming improves the diagnostic certainty of breast ultrasound exams, Proceedings of the 2020 IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium, Virtual, September 6-11, 2020 [pdf]

Alycen was selected as the winner of this symposium, alongside Prof. Brooks Lindsey from Georgia Institute of Technology.

Prof. Bell Elected to AIMBE College of Fellows

Congratulations to Prof. Muyinatu Bell on her election to the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) College of Fellows! AIMBE Fellows represent the top 2% of medical and biological engineers. In addition, Prof. Bell is one of only four Assistant Professors to be elected at this career stage, out of 1,500 fellows elected in the past 10 years! This significant achievement highlights Prof. Bell’s outstanding research contributions and impactful advocacy for her field.

Prof. Bell was nominated, reviewed, and elected by peers and members of the AIMBE College of Fellows for pioneering contributions to development of ultrasonic and photoacoustic medical imaging systems, including coherence-based beamforming, photoacoustic-guided surgery, and deep learning applications.

AIMBE News Release

BME Department Announcement 

WSE Announcement 

HEMI Announcement 

Malone Center Announcement

IEEE UFFC-S Announcement 

Invited Review Published in BMEF

Prof. Bell and Lingyi Zhao co-authored an invited review entitled, A Review of Deep Learning Applications in Lung Ultrasound Imaging of COVID-19 Patients, which was recently published in BME Frontiers.

This review is focused on deep learning applications in lung ultrasound imaging of COVID-19 and provides a comprehensive overview of ultrasound systems utilized for data acquisition, associated datasets, deep learning models, and comparative performance..

Citation: Lingyi Zhao, Muyinatu A. Lediju Bell, “A Review of Deep Learning Applications in Lung Ultrasound Imaging of COVID-19 Patients“, BME Frontiers, vol. 2022, Article ID 9780173, 17 pages, 2022. https://doi.org/10.34133/2022/9780173

Application of gCNR to Photoacoustic Imaging is a Top-Cited Paper

Published less than two years ago in June 2020, Application of the generalized contrast-to-noise ratio to assess photoacoustic image quality received the honor of being a top-cited paper in the journal Biomedical Optics Express in January 2022. This paper investigates a newly developed, probability-based, generalized contrast-to-noise (gCNR) when applied to photoacoustic images. We recommend gCNR as a new standard for assessment of novel photoacoustic beamforming and image formation techniques.

Congratulations to Kelley, Michelle, Mardava, Theron, and Prof. Bell for contributing this foundational development for the photoacoustics and biomedical optics community!

Four Abstracts Accepted to SPIE

Four PULSE Lab abstracts were accepted to various SPIE conferences this year.

SPIE Photonics West took place January 22-27, 2022, and the following work was presented by Michelle and Eduardo.

SPIE Medical Imaging will take place February 20-24, 2022, and the following work will be presented by Ben Frey.

In addition, Prof. Bell was invited to speak at SPIE Optics + Photonics, which will take place August 22-25, 2022, where she will deliver the presentation:

  • Bell MAL, Ultrasound Image Formation in the Deep Learning Age, SPIE Optics + Photonics, Emerging Topics in Artificial Intelligence, San Diego, California, August 22-25, 2022

Happy Holidays from the PULSE Lab

The PULSE Lab gathered for an outdoor lab lunch in celebration of the end of the semester and the onset of the holidays.

Clockwise from top left: Michelle, Arunima, Alycen, Jiaxin, Eduardo, Junior, Prof. Bell, Mardava, Lingyi.

Happy Holidays from the PULSE Lab!

Prof. Bell Joins the Editorial Advisory Board of GEN Biotechnology

GEN Biotechnology is a new peer-reviewed journal launching in early 2022, focused on exceptional groundbreaking research across all aspects of biotechnology. Prof. Bell is one of the inaugural members of the Editorial Advisory Board. Submission instructions for your groundbreaking biotechnology research that validates and showcases advances in technology development and scientific and medical applications are available here.

Journal Paper Accepted to Frontiers in Photonics

Congratulations to Eduardo González! His first-author paper entitled Acoustic Frequency-Based Approach for Identification of Photoacoustic Surgical Biomarkers was accepted for publication in the journal Frontiers in Photonics.

This paper demonstrates a novel approach to accurately identify biological markers by analyzing the acoustic frequency response from either a single-wavelength emission (i.e., single-wavelength atlas method) or two consecutive wavelength emissions (i.e., dual-wavelength atlas method). The proposed approach relies on training sets to identify photoacoustic-sensitive materials, is robust against changes in fluence levels, and has comparable sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy to those obtained with conventional and enhanced spectral unmixing methods. This paper is part of the journal’s research topic Biophotonics Technologies for Clinical Translation.

Citation: González EA, Graham CA, Bell MAL, Acoustic frequency-based approach for identification of photoacoustic surgical biomarkers, Frontiers in Photonics, 2, 2021 [pdf]

Welcome to Arunima Sharma, Junior Arroyo, and Jiaxin Zhang

The PULSE Lab welcomes Arunima Sharma, Junior Arroyo, and Jiaxin Zhang.

Arunima is a postddoctoral fellow who received her Ph.D. degree in Biomedical Engineering from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Junior joins us from the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru in Lima, Peru, where he completed an M.S. degree in Digital Signal and Image Processing and a B.S. degree in Physics. He is a matriculating PhD student in the BME Department.

Jiaxin has an M.E. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Virginia, Charlottesville and a B.E. degree in Electrical Engineering from Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing, China. She is matriculating as a PhD student in the ECE Department.
Welcome Arunima, Junior, and Jiaxin!

Mardava Presents at the Maryland STEM Festival

Congratulations to Mardava Gubbi for successfully disseminating his work to the general public at the 2021 Maryland STEM Festival! The event was live streamed with the recording now available on Youtube. Mardava was the first of 5 presenters.

Mardava describes work that was also presented to a technical audience at the 2021 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA). His associated peer-reviewed conference paper is entitled, “Deep Learning-Based Photoacoustic Visual Servoing: Using Outputs from Raw Sensor Data as Inputs to a Robot Controller.”

PULSE Lab ICRA Announcement

JHU Hub Article

Alycen and Jessica Named ARCS Foundation Scholars

Alycen Wiacek and Jessica Su each received the distinction of being selected as scholars of the Achievement Rewards for College Scientists (ARCS) Foundation, Metropolitan Washington Chapter, for the 2021-2022 academic year. Jessica is the 2021-2022 Bill & Marilynn Sweetser Undergraduate Scholar. Alycen is the 2021-2022 JCM Foundation Graduate Scholar. Congratulations Alycen and Jessica!

JHU ECE Department Announcement

Alycen Wiacek Named 2022 Siebel Scholar

Congratulations to Alycen Wiacek! She was named to the 2022 Class of Siebel Scholars — a highly selective group of individuals representing the top graduate students in the world. Alycen was recognized in the bioengineering category, and she is the only student not enrolled in the JHU BME PhD program to be recognized in this category this year. Alycen is also the first JHU ECE PhD student to receive this outstanding recognition. 

 

Businesswire Announcement

JHU Hub Announcement

JHU ECE Department Announcement

Five Abstracts Accepted to IEEE IUS 2021 & Prof. Bell Co-Hosts Annual WIE Event


The following PULSE Lab abstracts were accepted for presentation during the 2021 IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium (IUS) to be held on September 11-16, 2021 online (due to COVID-19).

  1. A Beamformer-Independent Method to Predict Photoacoustic Visual Servoing System Failure from a Single Image Frame to be presented by Eduardo González in the session entitled Imaging & Image Enhancement & Decluttering II (PM) to
  2. Comparison of Compressional and Elastic Photoacoustic Simulations for Planning, Imaging, and Guidance of Neurosurgeries to be presented by Michelle Graham in the session entitled Photoacoustic Imaging III (PM) to
  3. Quantifying the Impact of Breast Density on the Lag-One Coherence of Hypoechoic Masses to be presented by Alycen Wiacek in the session entitled Beamforming Methodologies & Devices (PM) to
  4. A Method to Estimate the Spatial Coherence of Photoacoustic Channel Data Without Access to Channel Data to be presented by Kelley Kempski & Mardava Gubbi in the session entitled Beamforming Methodologies & Devices (PM)  to
  5. Extending CohereNet to Retain Physical Features When Classifying Benign or Malignant Breast Masses to be presented by Alycen Wiacek in the session entitled Tissue Characterization II (PM) to

Congrats to Alycen, Eduardo, Michelle, Kelley, and Mardava!

In addition to co-authoring the above publications:

Symposium website: https://2021.ieee-ius.org

PULSE Lab REU Student Wins 2nd Place Presentation Award

Congrats to Benjamin Frey! He was our summer Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) student who conducted a virtual summer research project with us. His research topic was centered on deep learning applied to lung ultrasound imaging of COVID-19 patients. His outstanding work earned him a second place presentation award at the 2021 Computational Sensing and Medical Robotics (CSMR) REU Final Presentations Award Ceremony. Ben joins a long list of PULSE Lab REU students to win this award.

    Special thanks to Ben’s postdoc mentor, Lingyi Zhao, for helping to make Ben’s project such a resounding success!

    Welcome to Summer Undergraduate Students Camryn and Ben

    Welcome to Camryn Graham and Ben Frey! Camryn and Ben are joining the PULSE Lab this summer as part of the LCSR Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program in Computational Sensing and Medical Robotics. They are pursuing undergraduate degrees at universities located in the midwest.

    Camryn Graham

    • University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI)
    • Biomedical Engineering major
    • Music minor
    • NSF-funded REU student

    Benjamin Frey

    • University of St. Thomas (St. Paul, MN)
    • Physics (BS), Computer Science (BS), Business Administration (BA) triple major
    • NSF-funded REU student

    Camryn and Ben will be working with us for 10 weeks throughout the summer on projects in the area of ultrasound and photoacoustic imaging.

    Photoacoustic-Guided Surgery Review is a Top 10 Download

    Within its first month of publication, Photoacoustic-Guided Surgery from Head to Toe, an invited review co-authored by Alycen Wiacek and Prof. Bell, received the honor of being a top 10 download from the journal Biomedical Optics Express. This invited review covers multiple aspects of the use of photoacoustic imaging to guide both surgical and related non-surgical interventions and includes a discussion of complete systems and tools needed to maximize success.

    Congratulations to Alycen and Prof. Bell for capturing the attention of the biomedical optics community!

    Arun Nair Successfully Defended His PhD Dissertation

    Congratulations to PULSE Lab member Dr. Arun Nair! He successfully defended his PhD dissertation on May 25, 2021. Arun was co-advised by ECE Profs. Bell and Tran. His defense presentation was entitled Machine Learning for Beamforming in Ultrasound, Radar, and Audio. Arun, his fellow labmates, and his co-advisors celebrated with an outdoor dinner and a delicious cake creation from PULSE Lab member Kelley Kempski. Arun’s post-graduate plans are to work for Amazon, Inc. in the Bay area.

    30 Invited Talks by Prof. Bell in 2020-2021

    Prof. Bell delivered a total of 17 invited talks to date in 2021 (compared to 13 in 2020 and over 70 talks total). Here is a summary of the 2020-2021 talk titles, dates, and locations, with additional highlights, announcements, and links to recordings wherever available:

    2021

    1. Distinguished Keynote: 19th Annual Imaging Network Ontario (ImNO) Symposium, Listening to the Sound of Light to Guide Surgeries, Toronto, ON, March 22-23, 2021 [delivered via Zoom to ~180 participants]
    2. Plenary: IEEE EMBS Grand Challenge on Data Science: Medical Imaging, Ultrasound Image Formation in the Deep Learning Age, February 10, 2021 [delivered via Zoom webinar to ~230 participants]
    3. Invited: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Computational Medicine Seminar Series, Listening to the Sound of Light to Guide Surgeries, Chapel Hill, NC, May 20, 2021 [virtual delivery]
    4. Invited: SPIE Women in Optics Spotlight Series, Representation Matters: Role Models and Allies, May 12, 2021 [virtual delivery, recording available for SPIE members]
      • Promotional Advertisement:
    5. Invited: University of Virginia, Biomedical Engineering Seminar Series, Listening to the Sound of Light to Guide Surgeries, Charlottesville, VA, April 30, 2021 [virtual delivery via Zoom to ~50 attendees]
    6. Invited: Marquette University and Medical College of Wisconsin, Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering Seminar Series, Listening to the Sound of Light to Guide Surgeries, Milwaukee, WI, April 23, 2021 [virtual delivery]
    7. Invited: OSA Therapeutic Laser Applications Technical Group Special Event at the OSA Biophotonics Congress: Optics in the Life Sciences, Listening to the Sound of Light to Guide Surgeries, April 14, 2021 [virtual delivery]
    8. Invited: AIUM Machine Learning in Application to Ultrasound Beamforming Session, Deep Learning Architectures and Applications for Ultrasound Image Formation, New York, NY, April 10-14, 2021 [virtual delivery]
    9. Invited: University of Colorado at Boulder, Applied Mathematics Colloquium, Ultrasound Image Formation in the Deep Learning Age, April 2, 2021 [virtual delivery, recording available on YouTube]
    10. Invited: Medtronic, Inc., Photoacoustic Vision for Surgical Guidance, San Francisco, CA, March 19, 2021 [virtual delivery]
    11. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, EECS Seminar Series, Listening to the Sound of Light to Guide Surgeries, Cambridge, MA, March 15, 2021 [virtual delivery]
    12. Invited: SPIE Photonics West, Photoacoustic Vision for Surgical Guidance, San Francisco, CA, March 6-11, 2021 [virtual delivery]
    13. Invited: University of Toledo, Listening to the Sound of Light to Guide Surgeries, Bioengineering Seminar Series, Toledo, OH, March 5, 2021 [virtual delivery]
    14. Invited: University of Pennsylvania, Photoacoustic Vision for Surgical Robotics, GRASP On Robotics Seminar Series, Philadelphia, PA, February 26, 2021 [delivered via Zoom, recording available on YouTube]
    15. Invited: University of Washington, Bioengineering Seminar Series, Listening to the Sound of Light to Guide Surgeries, Seattle, WA, February 11, 2021 [delivered via Zoom]
    16. Invited: Photonics Spectra Conference, Listening to the Sound of Light to Guide Surgeries, January 19-22, 2021
    17. Invited by AIUM’s Artificial Intelligence Summit Task Force: American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine (AIUM) Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Medical Ultrasound Imaging Summit, AI enabled US Signal Processing, January 13 & 20, 2021 [virtual delivery via Zoom to ~90 attendees]

    2020

    1. Keynote: NeurIPS Black in AI Workshop, Ultrasound Image Formation in the Deep Learning Age, December 7, 2020 [virtual delivery via live stream with Zoom Q&A, recording available]
    2. Keynote: King’s College London (KCL) Biomedical Engineering and Imaging Sciences (BMEIS) Postgraduate Research (PGR) Symposium, Photoacoustic Imaging for Surgical and Interventional Guidance, July 20, 2020 [virtual delivery via MS Teams to approximately 175 participants]
    3. Plenary: SPIE Photonics West, BiOS Hot Topics Plenary Event, Photoacoustic Imaging Assistants for Minimally Invasive Surgeries & Procedures, San Francisco, CA, February 1, 2020 [Inaugural Journal of Biomedical Optics (JBO) Speaker, selected for being the senior author of the most impactful paper published in JBO in 2019, recording available, livestream recording also available with over 1.2k views]
    4. Invited: 179th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Special Technical Session, “Death to Delay and Sum: Advanced Beamforming” Deep Learning the Sound of Light to Guide Surgeries, December 8-12, 2020 [virtual delivery via Zoom to ~45 attendees]
    5. Invited: University of California Irvine, Beckman Laser Institute & Medical Clinic Seminar Series, Listening to the Sound of Light to Guide Surgeries, Irvine, CA November 19, 2020 [delivered via Zoom to ~30 attendees, recording available on YouTube]
    6. Invited: University of Rochester, ECE Seminar Series, Listening to the Sound of Light to Guide Surgeries, Rochester, NY, November 11, 2020 [delivered via Zoom to ~30 attendees]
    7. Invited: University of Texas Austin, Biomedical Engineering Seminar Series, Listening to the Sound of Light to Guide Surgeries, Austin, TX, October 29, 2020 [delivered via Zoom to ~35 attendees]
    8. Invited: University of California Davis, Electrical and Computer Engineering Seminar Series, Listening to the Sound of Light to Guide Surgeries, Davis, CA, October 9, 2020 [delivered via Zoom to 170+ attendees]
    9. Invited: OSA Frontiers 2020 (FiO), Listening to the Sound of Light to Guide Surgeries, Washington, D.C., September 13-14, 2020 [delivered via Zoom to 20+ attendees]
    10. Invited: IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium, Photoacoustic Vision for Surgical Guidance, September 9, 2020 [delivered via Zoom to 80+ attendees]
    11. Invited: SPIE Journal of Biomedical Optics Hot Topics Webinar Series, Photoacoustic Imaging for Surgical and Interventional Guidance, one of three co-presenters in series entitled Photoacoustic Imaging: The Next Generation, August 17, 2020 [delivered via Demio to 200+ attendees, recording available]
    12. Invited: Duke University Ultrasound Seminar Series, Photoacoustic Spatial Coherence Theory, June 26, 2020 [delivered via Zoom with 40+ attendees]
    13. Invited: Ryerson University Physics Colloquium, Listening to the Sound of Light to Guide Surgeries, Toronto, CA, March 2, 2020 [Last in-person talk before COVID-19 travel restrictions were imposed]

    CANCELLED or POSTPONED DUE TO COVID-19

    1. Invited: 179th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Special Technical Session, “Death to Delay and Sum: Advanced Beamforming” Deep Learning the Sound of Light to Guide Surgeries, Chicago, IL, May 11-15, 2020 (postponed to December 8-12, 2020 due to COVID-19)
    2. Invited: University of Rochester, Distinguished Lecture Series, Rochester, NY, April 15, 2020 (postponed due to COVID-19)
    3. Invited: Columbia University, ECE Seminar Series, New York, NY, March 24, 2020 (postponed due to COVID-19)
    4. Invited: AIUM Machine Learning in Application to Ultrasound Beamforming Session, Deep Learning Architectures and Applications for Ultrasound Image Formation, New York, NY, March 21-25, 2020 (canceled due to COVID-19)

    Journal Paper Accepted to IEEE TMI

    Congratulations to Alycen Wiacek! Her first-author paper entitled Photoacoustic-guided laparoscopic and open hysterectomy procedures demonstrated with human cadavers was accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging.

    This work is the first to demonstrate a novel method for photoacoustic image-guided hysterectomies within the realistic imaging environment of a human cadaver during both open and laparoscopic procedures. With a contrast agent injected into the ureter, two laser wavelengths can be used to create a simultaneous display of the ureter and the uterine artery. This dual-wavelength approach was then integrated to create a novel surgical guidance system by estimating the tool-to-ureter distance and mapping that distance to an audible signal, similar to the parking sensor on a modern automobile. This auditory signal is intended to alert surgeons who are operating too closely to the ureter, which can lead to multiple life-threatening complications caused by accidental injury to the ureter during surgery.

    Citation: Wiacek A, Wang KC, Wu H, Bell MAL, Photoacoustic-guided laparoscopic and open hysterectomy procedures demonstrated with human cadavers, IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging (accepted May 13, 2021) [pdf]

    Michelle Completed the ECE Department Preliminary Research Proposal Seminar

    Congratulations to Michelle Graham on her successful completion of the ECE Department preliminary thesis research proposal and seminar requirement!

    Details about Michelle’s proposal seminar are available here: https://engineering.jhu.edu/ece/events/thesis-proposal-michelle-graham/?instance_id=1075#.YLSFAS33ZOk.

    The topics discussed in Michelle’s seminar are summarized in the following publications:

    Journal Articles

    1. Graham MT, Bell MAL, Photoacoustic Spatial Coherence Theory and Applications to Coherence-Based Image Contrast and Resolution, IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control, 67(10):2069-2084, 2020 [pdf]
    2. Graham MT, Huang J, Creighton F, Bell MAL, Simulations and human cadaver head studies to identify optimal acoustic receiver locations for minimally invasive photoacoustic-guided neurosurgery, Photoacoustics, 19:100183, 2020 [pdf]

    Conference Proceedings

    1. Graham M, Creighton F, Bell MAL, Validation of eyelids as acoustic receiver locations for photoacoustic-guided neurosurgery, Proceedings of SPIE Photonics West, San Francisco, CA, March 6-11, 2021 [pdf]
    2. Graham M, Creighton F, Bell MAL, Investigation of acoustic windows for photoacoustic imaging of intracranial blood vessels, Proceedings of the 2020 IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium, Virtual, September 6-11, 2020 [pdf]
    3. Graham M, Guo J, Bell MAL, Simultaneous visualization of nerves and blood vessels with multispectral photoacoustic imaging for intraoperative guidance of neurosurgeries, Proceedings of SPIE Photonics West, San Francisco, CA, February 2-7, 2019 [pdf]
    4. Graham M, Bell MAL, Development and validation of a short-lag spatial coherence theory for photoacoustic imaging, Proceedings of SPIE Photonics West, San Francisco, CA, January 28-31, 2018 [pdf]
    5. M Graham, MAL Bell, Theoretical Application of Short-Lag Spatial Coherence to Photoacoustic Imaging, Proceedings of the 2017 IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium, Washington, DC, September 6-9, 2017 [pdf]

    Invited Review Published in Biomedical Optics Express

    Prof. Bell and Alycen Wiacek co-authored an invited review entitled, Photoacoustic-Guided Surgery from Head to Toe, which was recently published in Biomedical Optics Express.

    This review covers multiple aspects of photoacoustic imaging to guide surgical & related non-surgical interventions, including a discussion of complete systems and tools needed to maximize success.

    Citation: Alycen Wiacek and Muyinatu A. Lediju Bell, “Photoacoustic-guided surgery from head to toe [Invited],” Biomed. Opt. Express 12, 2079-2117 (2021) [bibtex]

    Alycen Completed the ECE Department Preliminary Research Proposal Seminar

    Congratulations to Alycen Wiacek on her successful completion of the ECE Department preliminary thesis research proposal and seminar requirement!

    Details about Alycen’s proposal seminar are available here: https://engineering.jhu.edu/ece/events/thesis-proposal-alycen-wiacek/?instance_id=1066#.YGna5khKi8o.

    The topics discussed in Alycen’s seminar are summarized in the following publications:

    Journal Articles

    1. Wiacek A, Oluyemi E, Myers K, Mullen L, Bell MAL, Coherence-based beamforming increases the diagnostic certainty of distinguishing fluid from solid masses in breast ultrasound exams, Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology, 46(6):1380-1394, 2020 [pdf]
    2. Wiacek A, González E, Bell MAL, CohereNet: A Deep Learning Architecture for Ultrasound Spatial Correlation Estimation and Coherence-Based Beamforming, IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control, 67(12):2574-2583, 2020 [featured on journal cover] [pdf]
    3. Wiacek A, Rindal OMH, Falomo E, Myers K, Fabrega-Foster K, Harvey S, Bell MAL, Robust Short-Lag Spatial Coherence Imaging of Breast Ultrasound Data: Initial Clinical Results, IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control, 66(3):527-540, 2019 [pdf]

    Conference Proceedings

    1. Wiacek A, Oluyemi E, Myers K, Mullen L, Bell MAL, Coherence-based beamforming improves the diagnostic certainty of breast ultrasound exams, Proceedings of the 2020 IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium, Virtual, September 6-11, 2020 [pdf]
    2. Wiacek A, González E, Dehak N, Bell MAL, CohereNet: A deep learning approach to coherence-based beamforming, Proceedings of the 2019 IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium, Glasgow, Scotland, October 6-9, 2019 [pdf]
    3. Wiacek A, Myers K, Falomo E, Rindal OMH, Fabrega-Foster K, Harvey S, Bell MAL, Clinical feasibility of coherence-based beamforming to distinguish solid from fluid hypoechoic breast masses, Proceedings of the 2018 IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium, Kobe, Japan, October 22-25, 2018 [pdf]

    Reese Dunne Wins Goldwater Scholarship

    Congratulations to Reese Dunne, our 2020 summer REU student, who was recently selected to receive the 2021 Barry S. Goldwater Scholarship! The Goldwater Scholarship Program is one of the oldest and most prestigious national scholarships in the natural sciences, engineering, and mathematics in the United States. This program seeks to identify and support college sophomores and juniors who show exceptional promise of becoming the nation’s next generation of research leaders.

    After completing summer research in the PULSE Lab through our NSF-Funded CSMR REU Program, Reese returned to complete his undergraduate studies at Mississippi State University. Reese is now his university’s only Goldwater Scholar in 2021 and his university’s 6th winner since 2012. Reese’s additional successes since departing from our program and winning the program’s 2nd Best Presentation Award include winning the 2nd place award in the Biological Sciences and Engineering category at his school’s Fall 2020 Undergraduate Research Symposium and winning the Best Oral Presentation award in the STEM category at his state-wide Mississippi Honors Undergraduate Conference. Reese presented his summer research with us to secure these outstanding wins.

    JHU Hub Story

    Mississippi State University News (re: Goldwater)

    Mississippi State University News (re: Undergraduate Research Symposium)

    Peer-Reviewed Paper Accepted to ICRA

    Congratulations to Mardava Gubbi! His paper, Deep Learning-Based Photoacoustic Visual Servoing: Using Outputs from Raw Sensor Data as Inputs to a Robot Controller, was accepted for presentation at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA),  Xi’an, China, May 30 – June 5, 2021. This peer-reviewed paper was also accepted for inclusion in the conference proceedings.

    ICRA is the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society’s flagship conference and the premier international forum for robotics researchers to present and discuss their work.

    Congrats again on this significant achievement, recognition, and milestone, Mardava!

    Welcome to Lingyi Zhao

    The PULSE Lab welcomes postdoc Lingyi Zhao. Lingyi received a PhD from the Georgia Tech/Emory/Peking University joint Ph.D. program in Biomedical Engineering. Prior to that, she received a B.S. degree in Physics with a minor in Acoustics from Nanjing University in Nanjing, China. Welcome Lingyi!

    Early Career Achievement Award Celebration, Invited Talk, and Five PULSE Lab Abstracts Accepted to SPIE Photonics West 2021

    Five PULSE Lab abstracts were accepted to SPIE Photonics West. This conference is taking place virtually, March 6-11, 2021.

    1. Graham M, Dunne R, Bell MAL, Investigating the effects of compressional and elastic photoacoustic waves to predict transcranial photoacoustic image quality for guidance of minimally invasive neurosurgeries, Proceedings of SPIE Photonics West, San Francisco, CA, March 6-11, 2021
    2. Graham M, Creighton F, Bell MAL, Validation of eyelids as acoustic receiver locations for photoacoustic-guided neurosurgery, Proceedings of SPIE Photonics West, San Francisco, CA, March 6-11, 2021
    3. Wiacek A, Wang KC, Wu H, Bell MAL, Parking sensor-inspired approach to photoacoustic-guided hysterectomy demonstrated with human cadavers, Proceedings of SPIE Photonics West, San Francisco, CA, March 6-11, 2021
    4. González E, Jain A, Bell MAL, Photoacoustic differentiation of cortical from cancellous bone in the lumbar vertebrae of an intact human cadaver to prevent bone breaches during spinal fusion surgeries, Proceedings of SPIE Photonics West, San Francisco, CA, March 6-11, 2021
    5. Kempski KM, Graham MT, Wiacek A, Gubbi MR, Bell MAL, Generalized contrast-to-noise ratio as a metric of photoacoustic image quality, Proceedings of SPIE Photonics West, San Francisco, CA, March 6-11, 2021

    This work spans two tracks within the SPIE Photonics West BiOS Conference:

    In addition to these five PULSE Lab contributions:

    1. Prof. Bell was invited to present on the topic Photoacoustic vision for surgical guidance.
    2. Pof. Bell’s Early Career Achievement Award was celebrated in a live presentation by 2021 SPIE President David Andrews. The recording of this presentation will be available soon.

    Prof. Bell Co-Authors Cell Commentary, Fund Black Scientists

    Prof. Bell co-authored a publication in the scientific journal Cell with fellow colleagues at 15 institutions across the nation to shed light on NIH funding disparities. The publication is entitled Fund Black Scientists. All academics are encouraged to read it, digest the contents, and reflect on what we each want our role to be at this historic moment in time.

    JHU Hub Story

    University of Washington Newsroom

    University of Michigan News

    University of Florida News

    Washington University in St. Louis News

    Prof. Bell Wins SPIE Early Career Achievement Award

    Congratulations to Prof. Bell, who was selected to receive the 2021 SPIE Early Career Achievement Award. This award recognizes excellence in academia, particularly with regard to significant and innovative technical contributions in the engineering or scientific fields of relevance to SPIE. The SPIE Awards Committee made this recommendation in recognition of Prof. Bell’s pioneering contributions to photoacoustic imaging for surgical guidance, including innovative technology designs, novel deep learning applications, informative spatial coherence beamforming theory, and visionary clinical possibilities.

    Award Details

    SPIE Announcement

    ECE Announcement

    HEMI Announcement

    Malone Center Announcement

    Journal Paper Accepted to IEEE T-BME

    Congratulations to Eduardo González! His first-author journal paper entitled Combined ultrasound and photoacoustic image guidance of spinal pedicle cannulation demonstrated with intact ex vivo specimens was accepted to the journal IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering.

    This paper presents the first known combined ultrasound and photoacoustic image guidance system with software capabilities that are optimized for pedicle cannulation in posterior spinal fusion surgery. We demonstrate that both amplitude- and coherence-based beamforming methods are mutually beneficial for this task. Specifically, coherence-based beamforming of ultrasound images improved the visualization of bone for ultrasound-to-CT registration, while coherence-based beamforming of photoacoustic images improved target localization, which is important for tracking tool tips during pedicle hole creation. As shown in the figure, amplitude-based photoacoustic beamforming differentiated signals associated with an optical fiber place inside a pedicle hole (which is ideal for screw placement) from signals associated with an optical fiber touching cortical bone (which is characteristic of an impending bone breach that needs to be avoided). This proposed combination of imaging modalities and beamforming methods is promising to assist surgeons with identifying and avoiding accidental bone breaches during spinal fusion surgeries.

    These new findings nicely complement our previous findings demonstrating that photoacoustic-based differentiation is possible prior to the creation of any holes, which is advantageous for correctly determining an appropriate starting point for hole creation. Together, these findings represent a complete system that can be used prior to and during pedicle hole creation for spinal fusion surgeries.

    Citation: González E, Jain A, Bell MAL, Combined ultrasound and photoacoustic image guidance of spinal pedicle cannulation demonstrated with intact ex vivo specimens, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering (accepted December 17, 2020) [pdf]

    Welcome to Serene Kamal & Joshua Krachman

    The PULSE Lab welcomes Serene Kamal and Joshua Krachman.

    Serene received the B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles.  She will be matriculating as a PhD student in the ECE Department.

    Joshua is B.S./M.S.E. student in the BME Department, completing his final year of the 3+1 Dual Degree Program. He will be completing master’s level research as a member of the PULSE Lab.
    Welcome Serene and Josh!

    Prof. Bell Wins NSF Smart & Connected Health Award

    Prof. Bell was awarded $1M from the NSF to advance cardiac procedures with the broader goal of replacing fluoroscopy one day. The objective of this award is to apply theoretical spatial coherence models and experimental optical analyses to understand the limits of a novel, integrated robotic-photoacoustic imaging system for guiding cardiac surgeries and interventions. This work will be completed in collaboration with Jonathan Chrispin, MD at Johns Hopkins Medicine.

    More details on the basic principles of the proposed approach are available in our initial journal publication on this topic:

    • Graham M, Assis F, Allman D, Wiacek A, González E, Gubbi M, Dong J, Hou H, Beck S, Chrispin J, Bell MAL, In vivo demonstration of photoacoustic image guidance and robotic visual servoing for cardiac catheter-based interventions, IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, 39(4):1015-1029, 2020 [pdf]

    This work has also been featured in the following articles and press releases:

    We additionally have a pending patent for these ideas.

    NSF Award Announcement

    ECE Department Announcement

    Alycen and Kelley Receive MICCAI Student Participation Award


    Alycen Wiacek and Kelley Kemspki were selected to receive the MICCAI Student Participation Award! The MICCAI Society provided 50 of these awards non-author student member registrations to support online participation from diverse members of the global scientific community, considering the virtual nature of the MICCAI 2020 conference this year. The award selection committee included representation from the MICCAI Student Board, the MICCAI Society Diversity Working Group, Women in MICCAI, and the MICCAI 2020 Conference Organization. This selection committee was chaired by the MICCAI awards coordinator. Congrats to Alycen and Kelley on their selection!

    Invited Perspective Published in Journal of Applied Physics

    Prof. Bell shares her thoughts on Photoacoustic imaging for surgical guidance: Principles, applications, and outlook in an invited Perspective that was recently published in the Journal of Applied Physics. According to the journal’s website: Perspective articles are written to present an expert viewpoint on topics currently generating a lot of interest in the research community. While perspectives generally provide a brief overview of the topic, their main purpose is to provide a forward looking view on where progress in a particular research area is heading. 

    Citation: Bell MAL, Photoacoustic imaging for surgical guidance: Principles, applications, and outlook, Journal of Applied Physics, 128(6):060904, 2020 [pdf]

    Journal Paper Published in Biomedical Optics Express

    Congratulations to Kelley Kempski! Her first-author journal paper entitled Application of the generalized contrast-to-noise ratio to assess photoacoustic image quality was published in Biomedical Optics Express.

    This paper investigates a newly developed, probability-based, generalized contrast-to-noise (gCNR) when applied to photoacoustic images. More traditional metrics experience large variations when a target is fully detectable with additional increases bearing no impact on photoacoustic target detectability. In addition, gCNR is robust to changes in traditional metrics introduced by applying a minimum threshold to image amplitudes. Therefore, gCNR has promising potential to provide additional insight, particularly when designing new beamformers and image formation techniques and when reporting quantitative performance without an opportunity to qualitatively assess corresponding images (e.g., in text-only abstracts). We recommend gCNR as a new standard for assessment of novel photoacoustic beamforming and image formation techniques.

    Citation: Kempski KM, Graham MT, Gubbi MR, Palmer T, Bell MAL, Application of the generalized contrast-to-noise ratio to assess photoacoustic image quality, Biomedical Optics Express, 11(7), 3684-3698, 2020 [pdf]

    Paper Published in Journal of Biomedical Optics

    Congratulations to Eduardo González! His first-author journal paper entitled GPU implementation of photoacoustic short-lag spatial coherence imaging for improved image-guided interventions was accepted to Journal of Biomedical Optics.

    This paper introduces the first known real-time implementation of short-lag spatial coherence (SLSC) beamforming for photoacoustic imaging and applies this real-time algorithm to improve signal segmentation during photoacoustic-based visual servoing with low-energy lasers. Results are promising for the use of low-energy, miniaturized lasers to perform GPU-SLSC photoacoustic-based visual servoing in the operating room with laser pulse repetition frequencies as high as 41.2 Hz.

    Citation: González E, Bell MAL, GPU implementation of photoacoustic short-lag spatial coherence imaging for improved image-guided interventions, Journal of BiomedicalOptics, 25(7):077002, 2020 [pdf]

    Eight Abstracts Accepted to IEEE IUS 2020 and Invited Talk by Prof. Bell

    The following PULSE Lab abstracts were accepted for presentation during the 2020 IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium (IUS) to be held on September 6-11, 2020 online (due to COVID-19).

    1. Theory-Based Predictions of Generalized Contrast-to-Noise Ratios for Photoacoustic Images to be presented by Mardava Gubbi in the session entitled Technical Advances in Photoacoustic Imaging on Tuesday, September 8, 11:30 – 1:30 PM (PDT), 2:30 – 4:30 PM (EDT)
    2. Multi-task learning for ultrasound image formation and segmentation directly from raw in vivo data to be presented by Kelley Kempski in the session entitled Segmentation & Registration on Wednesday, September 9, 4:15 – 6:15 AM (PDT), 7:15 – 9:15 AM (EDT)
    3. Dual-Wavelength Photoacoustic-Guided Hysterectomy Demonstration with a Human Cadaver to be presented by Alycen Wiacek in the session entitled Photoacoustic Ultrasound Frequency Analysis & Image Guided Interventions on Wednesday, September 9, 4:15 – 6:15 AM (PDT), 7:15 – 9:15 AM (EDT)
    4. Experimental Cadaver Investigation of Ocular Receiver Location for Photoacoustic Imaging of Intracranial Blood Vessels  to be presented by Michelle Graham in the session entitled Photoacoustic Ultrasound Frequency Analysis & Image Guided Interventions on Wednesday, September 9, 4:15 – 6:15 AM (PDT), 7:15 – 9:15 AM (EDT)
    5. Acoustic Frequency-Based Multispectral Differentiation of Photoacoustic Signals from Surgical Biomarkers to be presented by Eduardo González in the session entitled Photoacoustic Ultrasound Frequency Analysis & Image Guided Interventions on Wednesday, September 9, 4:15 – 6:15 AM (PDT), 7:15 – 9:15 AM (EDT)
    6. Coherence-Based Beamforming Improves the Diagnostic Certainty of Breast Ultrasound Exams to be presented by Alycen Wiacek in the session entitled Machine Learning Approaches & Applications on Thursday, September 10, 7:45 AM (PDT), 10:45 AM (EDT)

    Congrats to Alycen, Eduardo, Michelle, Kelley, and Mardava!

    Prof. Bell also collaborated with colleagues on the following work that will be presented at IEEE IUS 2020:

    • Enhancing the Detectability of Highly Coherent Targets in Short-Lag Spatial Coherence Images with Multi-Line Transmission by Giulia Matrone[3}, Muyinatu Lediju Bell{1}, Alessandro Ramalli{2}
      {1}Johns Hopkins University, United States; {2}University of Florence, Italy; {3}University of Pavia, Italy to be presented in the session entitled Enhancing Images Through Novel Beamforming II on Thursday, September 10, 4:15 – 6:15 AM (PDT), 7:15 – 9:15 AM (EDT)
    • Challenge on Ultrasound Beamforming with Deep Learning (CUBDL) by Muyinatu Bell{2}, Jiaqi Huang{2}, Dongwoon Hyun{3}, Yonina Eldar{4}, Ruud van Sloun{1}, Massimo Mischi{1}
      {1}Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands; {2}Johns Hopkins University, United States; {3}Stanford University, United States; {4}Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel to be presented in the session entitled Deep Learning in Beamforming on Thursday, September 10, 4:15 – 6:15 AM (PDT), 7:15 – 9:15 AM (EDT)
    • CUBDL Live Session (winner announcement) on Friday, September 11, 9:45 – 10:15 AM (PDT), 12:45 – 1:15 PM (EDT)

    In addition to the above presentations, Prof. Bell will give an invited lecture on the topic:

    • Photoacoustic Vision for Surgical Guidance in the Advanced Imaging Technologies and Techniques Special Session on Wednesday, September 9, 6:30 – 8:00 AM (PDT), 9:30 AM – noon (EDT) [full list of invited speakers]

    Symposium website: https://2020.ieee-ius.org

    Prof. Bell Presents JBO Webinar on Photoacoustic Imaging

    JBO webinars were created after the world switched to virtual activities. They help to keep us connected, featuring talks and discussions about some of the hottest technologies in biomedical optics. Brian Pogue, MacLean Professor of Engineering at Dartmouth and Editor in Chief of the Journal of Biomedical Optics is the host of this webinar series, with luminaries Lihong Wang and Paul Beard as the moderators for the invited session featuring Dr. Bell.

    A replay of this webinar on Photoacoustic Imaging: The Next Generation includes Dr. Bell’s invited presentation on Photoacoustic imaging for Surgical and Interventional Guidance. Dr. Bell’s presentation starts at the 40 min mark (although viewing of all presentations is encouraged to gain a broader perspective of the current state of the field).

    SPIE Newsroom Announcement

    Journal Paper Accepted to Photoacoustics

    Congratulations to Michelle Graham! Her first-author journal paper entitled Simulations and human cadaver head studies to identify optimal acoustic receiver locations for minimally invasive photoacoustic-guided neurosurgery was accepted to the journal Photoacoustics.

    This paper presents simulation and experimental studies performed with both an intact human skull (which was cleaned from tissue attachments) and a complete human cadaver head (with contents and surrounding tissue intact) to investigate optimal locations for ultrasound probe placement during photoacoustic-guided surgeries of the skull base. The combined simulation and experimental results newly introduce the eye as a suitable acoustic window for surgical guidance. We also demonstrate a light delivery design that is suitable for patient use. Results are generally promising toward identifying, quantifying, and overcoming major system design barriers for progression to future patient testing.

    Citation: Graham MT, Huang J, Creighton FX, Bell MAL, Simulations and human cadaver head studies to identify optimal acoustic receiver locations for minimally invasive photoacoustic-guided neurosurgery, Photoacoustics, 19:100183, 2020 [pdf]

    Journal Paper Accepted to IEEE T-UFFC

    Congratulations to Michelle Graham! Her first-author journal paper entitled Photoacoustic Spatial Coherence Theory and Applications to Coherence-Based Image Contrast and Resolution was accepted to the journal IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control.

    This paper presents the first known theoretical derivation for photoacoustic spatial coherence functions, demonstrating excellent agreement with experimental results, particularly in the short spatial lag region, which is represented as a percentage of the receive aperture (click on the .gif to see for yourself). The coherence functions theory can be described by relating the van Cittert Zernike theorem to photoacoustics. We achieved the associated incoherent source requirement by modeling a photoacoustic target as a collection of spatially incoherent absorbers. This theory was then used to hypothesize and test previously unexplored principles for optimizing photoacoustic short-lag spatial coherence (SLSC) images, including the influence of the incident light profile on photoacoustic spatial coherence functions and associated SLSC image contrast and resolution.

    Citation: Graham MT, Bell MAL, Photoacoustic Spatial Coherence Theory and Applications to Coherence-Based Image Contrast and Resolution, IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control (accepted May 26, 2020) [pdf]

    PULSE Lab REU Student Wins 2nd Place Presentation Award

    Congrats to Reese Dunne! He was our summer Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) student who conducted the first ever virtual summer research project with us. His research topic was centered on a comparison of compressional and elastic wave simulations for presurgical planning of photoacoustic guided neurosurgery, building on recently published paper from the PULSE Lab. His outstanding work earned him a second place presentation award at the 2020 Computational Sensing and Medical Robotics (CSMR) REU Final Presentations Award Ceremony. He joins a long list of PULSE Lab REU students to win this award.

    Special thanks to Reese’s graduate student mentor, Michelle Graham.

    Prof. Bell Presents Keynote Lecture at King’s College London

    Prof. Bell was invited to give a keynote presentation at the annual King’s College London School of Biomedical Engineering and Imaging Sciences (BMEIS) Postgraduate Research (PGR) Symposium. Her presentation was delivered via Microsoft Teams on the topic “Photoacoustic Imaging for Surgical and Interventional Guidance,” which included a discussion of her career path. After this presentation, she received a thoughtful appreciation award for her participation:

    King’s College London News

    Welcome to Our Summer Research Students

    The PULSE Lab welcomes two students who will be working with us this summer:

    Reese Dunn

    • Mississippi State University
    • Mechanical Engineering major
    • NSF REU in Computational Sensing and Medical Robotics

    Zehua (Eric) Li

    • Johns Hopkins University
    • M.S.E. student, Electrical and Computer Engineering

    These students will be working with us for 10 weeks or more on various projects in the areas of ultrasound and photoacoustic imaging. Projects will be completed remotely in light of our current ban on in-person laboratory research due to COVID-19. Welcome Reese and Zehua!

    Journal Paper Accepted to IEEE T-UFFC

    Congratulations to Arun Nair! His first-author journal paper entitled Deep learning to obtain simultaneous ultrasound image and segmentation outputs from a single input of raw channel data was accepted to IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control. The paper will appear in the journal’s special issue on Deep Learning in Medical Ultrasound – from image formation to image analysis.

    This paper explores the use of deep neural network (DNNs) as alternatives to delay-and-sum beamforming. The DNNs learned information directly from raw channel data to simultaneously generate both a segmentation map for automated ultrasound tasks and a corresponding ultrasound B-mode image for interpretable supervision of the automation. Although the focus was visualization and segmentation of anechoic targets surrounded by tissue, the concept can be adapted to any specific task of interest. Overall, the DNNs successfully translated feature representations learned from simulated data to phantom and in vivo data, which is promising for this novel approach to simultaneous ultrasound image formation and segmentation.

    Citation: Nair AA, Washington K, Tran T, Reiter A, Bell MAL, Deep learning to obtain simultaneous ultrasound image and segmentation outputs from a single input of raw channel data, IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control (accepted May 6, 2020) [pdf]

    Journal Paper Accepted to IEEE T-UFFC

    Congratulations to Alycen Wiacek! Her first-author journal paper entitled CohereNet: A Deep Learning Architecture for Ultrasound Spatial Correlation Estimation and Coherence-Based Beamforming was accepted to IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control. The paper will appear in the journal’s special issue on Deep Learning in Medical Ultrasound – from image formation to image analysis.

    This paper presents details of a novel deep neural network (DNN) architecture, named CohereNet, that was trained to estimate spatial correlation functions. The DNN-estimated correlation functions were then used to create short-lag spatial coherence ultrasound images at a faster rate than a CPU approach and with more accuracy than a GPU approach. Results were generalizable across multiple phantoms, in vivo datasets, ultrasound transducers, and ultrasound system manufacturers not included during training. CohereNet has additional potential benefits in low-power DNN-based FPGA implementations of coherence-based beamforming for miniaturized ultrasound imaging systems. In addition, CohereNet has potential utility in other areas of ultrasound imaging that require fundamental cross-correlation calculations, including elastography, speckle tracking, sound speed correction, and other advanced beamforming algorithms, such as minimum variance beamforming.

    Citation: A. Wiacek, E. González and M. A. L. Bell, “CohereNet: A Deep Learning Architecture for Ultrasound Spatial Correlation Estimation and Coherence-Based Beamforming,” IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control, accepted March 20, 2020 [pdf]