Prof. Bell Wins ORAU Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award

Congratulations to Prof. Bell, who was selected to receive a competitive ORAU Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award, which is designed to help ORAU member institutions retain their best young faculty members. This award will provide seed funding for the project entitled, Robust Short-Lag Spatial Coherence Imaging of Hypoechoic Breast Masses, which focuses on development and patient testing of a novel beamforming method developed in the PULSE Lab to differentiate fluid-filled masses from solid breast masses with greater certainty than the current ultrasound beamforming methods used in breast clinics today. Fluid-filled masses are often benign, but with current uncertainty rates, many fluid-filled masses undergo the same costly, time-consuming, and anxiety-provoking diagnostic work-ups as malignant masses, which are often solid.

The long-term goal of this research is to improve breast cancer screening and detection for the benefit of patients and for the redistribution of more healthcare system resources to cancer patients who need them most.

Related Highlights:

ORAU Press Release

ECE Department Announcement

Malone Center Announcement

IEEE T-UFFC Special Issue on Deep Learning

Special Issue IEEE T-UFFC : Deep learning in medical ultrasound – from image formation to image analysis

Prof. Bell is guest editing a the IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control (T-UFFC) Special Issue on Deep learning in medical ultrasound – from image formation to image analysis.

Contributions are sought from authors who are engaged in theoretical studies and developments on deep learning in medical ultrasound, as well as related applications, including, but not limited to:

  • Beamforming
  • Compressed sensing
  • Super-resolution, such as localization microscopy and microvascular imaging
  • Doppler
  • Photoacoustics
  • Elasticity imaging
  • Image restoration and enhancement
  • Image segmentation and classification
  • Diagnostics

Kelley Kempski Wins NSF GRFP Fellowship

Kelley Kempski, an undergraduate researcher in the PULSE Lab during Summer 2018 and winner of the NSF CSMR REU Best Presentation Award, received one of the highly competitive NSF GRFP Fellowships. We are excited to welcome Kelley back to our lab this fall! Kelley was admitted into the Johns Hopkins BME PhD program, and we are thrilled that she has chosen to pursue her graduate studies with us.

Muyinatu Bell named Maryland’s Outstanding Young Engineer

Congratulations to Prof. Bell who was named as Maryland’s Outstanding Young Engineer by the Maryland Academy of Sciences and the Maryland Science Center. This award recognizes,  encourages, and increases public awareness of the important work and accomplishments of young engineers, age 35 and under, residing in the state of Maryland.  Important factors in the final decision are the recipient’s contributions to the advancement of his or her field of research, the possibility that this work could become a game changer, and the prospect of the recipient to rise to national and international prominence in the next 5-10 years.  

Prof. Bell is recognized for her pioneering and innovative contributions to the field of photoacoustic-guided surgery. These innovations include novel light delivery systems that attach to surgical tools, coherence-based and deep learning beamforming techniques to clarify images, and integration of photoacoustic imaging systems with surgical and interventional robots. The award is accompanied by the Allan C. Davis medal and a cash prize.

Maryland Science Center Press Release

ECE Department Announcement

Whiting School of Engineering Announcement

Malone Center Announcement

JHU Hub Announcement

YouTube Video

  • Prof. Bell during feature video reveal ceremony

Alycen Wins Whiting School of Engineering Research Trainee Award

Congratulations to Alycen Wiacek! She won the Whiting School of Engineering Trainee Award at the DOM/WSE Hopkins Research Retreat, a joint retreat with the Department of Medicine (DOM) and Whiting School of Engineering (WSE), which took place on Friday, March 1, 2019 at the School of Medicine’s East Baltimore Campus. This award highlights one graduate student or postdoc within the WSE who submits a written statement clearly explaining the broad significance of his or her research to engineering, the major research hypothesis or question, the research approach and findings, and the relationship between this research and the applicant’s early career goals. Alycen presented her work on Coherence-Based Beamforming to Improve the Diagnostic Power of Breast Ultrasound Imaging. She was one of five finalists from multiple engineering departments across WSE.

Prof. Efie Kokkoli from the JHU Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering announced and presented Alycen with the award, which includes a $500 prize.

Also at the retreat, the PULSE Lab was recognized as one of three finalists for the WSE Lab Excellence Award. The lab was well represented with excellent poster presentations by Alycen, Eduardo, and Derek:

  • Alycen Wiacek
  • Derek Allman
  • Eduardo González

ECE Department Announcement

JHU ECE Facebook Post

Medicine Matters Blog Post

Prof. Bell Named 2019 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow

Congratulations to Prof. Muyinatu Bell who was selected by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation as a 2019 Sloan Research Fellow in Physics. The Sloan Research Fellowships are provided to stimulate fundamental research by early-career scientists and scholars of outstanding promise. These two-year fellowships are awarded in recognition of distinguished performance and the unique potential of recipients to make substantial contributions to their field. A total of 126 Sloan Research Fellowships are awarded annually with only 23 awarded in Physics this year.

“Sloan Research Fellows are the best young scientists working today,” says Adam F. Falk, president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. “Sloan Fellows stand out for their creativity, for their hard work, for the importance of the issues they tackle, and the energy and innovation with which they tackle them. To be a Sloan Fellow is to be in the vanguard of twenty-first century science.”

The 2019 Sloan Research Fellows each receive a two-year fellowship in the amount of $70,000 to further their research.

Sloan Foundation Press Release

JHU Hub Announcement

ECE Department Announcement

Malone Center Announcement

Whiting School of Engineering Announcement

HEMI Announcement

SPIE Photonics West 2019 Recap

The PULSE Lab just returned from a rousing and invigorating SPIE Photonics West conference in San Francisco, CA, which took place February 2-7, 2019 (see more details below photos).

  • Alycen Wiacek
  • Alycen Wiacek
  • Derek Allman
  • Derek Allman
  • Eduardo González
  • Michelle Graham
  • Kelley Kempski 

PULSE Lab attendees presented a combined total of six oral and poster presentations: 

  1. Kelley Kempski gave an oral presentation entitled “In vivo demonstration of photoacoustic-guided liver surgery”
  2. Michelle Graham gave an oral presentation entitled “Simultaneous visualization of nerves and blood vessels with multispectral photoacoustic imaging for intraoperative guidance of neurosurgeries”
  3. Derek Allman presented his poster “A deep learning-based approach to identify in vivo catheter tips during photoacoustic-guided cardiac interventions”
  4. Alycen Wiacek presented her poster “Techniques to distinguish the ureter from the uterine artery in photoacoustic-guided hysterectomies”
  5. Eduardo González presented his poster “Visualization of custom drill bit tips in a human vertebra for photoacoustic-guided spinal fusion surgeries”

  6. Dr. Bell gave an oral presentation entitled “Deep Learning the Sound of Light to Guide Surgeries” (photo unavailable). She also served as session chair and as a member of the Technical Program Committee of Advanced Biomedical and Clinical Diagnostic and Surgical Guidance Systems XVII.

This work was presented in the following two tracks within the BiOS Conference:

Photonics West BiOS Conference website: https://spie.org/conferences-and-exhibitions/photonics-west/bios

Prof. Bell to Deliver Keynote Presentation at OSA-Sponsored Conference in Sydney, Australia

Prof. Muyinatu Bell will travel to Sydney, Australia to deliver an invited plenary talk and keynote presentation at the OSA-Sponsored IONS Conference on Optics, Atoms, and Laser Applications (KOALA), taking place December 4-8, 2018 at Macquarie University.

Journal Paper Accepted to IEEE T-UFFC

Congratulations to Alycen Wiacek! Her first-author journal paper entitled “Robust Short-Lag Spatial Coherence Imaging of Breast Ultrasound Data: Initial Clinical Results” was accepted to the IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control. This paper will appear in the Special Issue on Pilot Clinical Translation of New Medical Ultrasound Methodologies.

This work is the first to investigate the application of short-lag spatial coherence (SLSC) imaging — and two new variations of this method developed in our lab (i.e., M-Weighted SLSC imaging and Robust SLSC imaging) — to breast ultrasound data. The two newer approaches revisit the lag summation step of SLSC imaging to achieve additional robustness to coherence outliers through weighted summation of individual coherence images (i.e., M-weighting) and through the application of robust principal component analysis (i.e., Robust SLSC, or R-SLSC).

An interesting finding from this initial investigation is that solid breast masses, which appear hypoechoic in traditional B-mode images, have similarly high coherence to that of surrounding tissue in these coherence-based images. This finding represents the first known instance of this phenomenon in hypoechoic ultrasound data from any type of tissue (including simulated, phantom, and in vivo liver data). This work shows great promise for implementing SLSC, M-Weighted SLSC, and/or R-SLSC imaging to distinguish between fluid-filled and solid hypoechoic breast masses, which has implications for improved breast cancer detection and screening, more streamlined diagnostic work ups, and reduced patient anxiety over suspicious breast mass findings.

Citation: A Wiacek, OMH Rindal, E Falomo, K Myers, K Fabrega-Foster, S Harvey, MAL Bell, Robust Short-Lag Spatial Coherence Imaging of Breast Ultrasound Data: Initial Clinical Results, IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control, accepted November 20, 2018 [pdf]

Also Available on Journal Website: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8548567

IEEE IUS 2018 Recap

The PULSE Lab just returned from Kobe, Japan, the location of the 2018 IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium (IUS).

Arun Nair presented his paper entitled “A fully convolutional neural network for beamforming ultrasound images“

 

Prof. Bell served on the 2018 IUS Organizing Committee as the Communications Chair. She received a certificate  from the UFFC Society President, Nazanin Bassiri-Gharb. Prof. Bell is also the newly appointed Women in Engineering (WIE) Ultrasonics Representative, and she organized the first IEEE WIE Elevator Pitch Event at IUS.

Derek Allman (photo unavailable) presented his poster entitled, “Using deep neural networks to remove photoacoustic reflection artifacts in ex vivo and in vivo tissue”

Alycen Wiacek (photo unavailable) presented her paper entitled, “Clinical feasibility of coherence-based beamforming to distinguish solid from fluid hypoechoic breast masses”

Eduardo González (photo unavailable) presented his paper entitled, “Segmenting bone structures in ultrasound images with Locally Weighted SLSC (LW-SLSC) beamforming”

Arun Nair additionally collaborated to contribute to the paper entitled “The Ultrasound File Format (UFF)“

IEEE UFFC-S Newsletter

ECE Department Announcement

Journal Paper Published in Scientific Reports

Our journal paper entitled Photoacoustic-based visual servoing of a needle tip was accepted for publication in Scientific Reports. Check out this video for a demonstration of our robotic photoacoustic assistant!

Citation: Bell MAL, Shubert J, Photoacoustic-based visual servoing of a needle tip, Scientific Reports, 8:15519, 2018 [pdf]

Journal Paper Accepted to Biomedical Optics Express

Our journal paper entitled Additive noise models for photoacoustic spatial coherence theory was accepted for publication in Biomedical Optics Express. This paper introduces two noise models for photoacoustic spatial coherence theory that compare favorably with experimental measurements. It will appear in the journal’s feature issue Topics in Biomedical Optics from the OSA Biophotonics Congress 2018.

Citation: B Stephanian, MT Graham, H Hou, MAL Bell, Additive noise models for photoacoustic spatial coherence theory, Biomedical Optics Express, 9(11):5566-5582, 2018 [pdf]

Five Abstracts Accepted to SPIE Photonics West

Five PULSE Lab abstracts were accepted to SPIE Photonics West. This conference will take place February 2-7, 2019 at the The Moscone Center in San Francisco, California.

  1. Simultaneous visualization of nerves and blood vessels with multispectral photoacoustic imaging for intraoperative guidance of neurosurgeries
    Michelle Graham, Joanna Guo, Muyinatu A. Lediju Bell

    4 February 2019 • 11:30 – 11:50 AM

  2. Techniques to distinguish the ureter from the uterine artery in photoacoustic-guided hysterectomies
    Alycen Wiacek, Karen Wang, Muyinatu A. Lediju Bell

    5 February 2019 • 6:00 – 8:00 PM

  3. Visualization of custom drill bit tips in a human vertebra for photoacoustic-guided spinal fusion surgeries
    Eduardo Gonzalez, Alycen Wiacek, Muyinatu A. Lediju Bell

    5 February 2019 • 6:00 – 8:00 PM

  4. In vivo demonstration of photoacoustic-guided liver surgery
    Kelley Kempski, Alycen Wiacek, Jasmin E. Palmer, Michelle Graham, Eduardo Gonzalez, Bria Goodson, Derek Allman, Huayu Hou, Sarah Beck, Jin He, Muyinatu A. Lediju Bell

    5 February 2019 • 6:00 – 8:00 PM

  5. A deep learning-based approach to identify in vivo catheter tips for photoacoustic-guided cardiac interventions
    Derek Allman, Fabrizio Assis, Jonathan Chrispin, Muyinatu A. Lediju Bell

    5 February 2019 • 6:00 – 8:00 PM

This work spans two tracks within the BiOS Conference:

Photonics West BiOS Conference website: https://spie.org/conferences-and-exhibitions/photonics-west/bios

Welcome to Mardava Gubbi

The PULSE Lab welcomes Mardava Gubbi. Mardava received a dual degree (B. Tech & M. Tech) in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. He will be matriculating as a PhD student in the ECE Department. Welcome Mardava!

Kelley Kempski Wins Best Presentation Award

Congratulations to PULSE Lab summer undergraduate student Kelley Kempski who won the best presentation award at the closing ceremonies for the NSF-funded REU program in Computational Sensing and Medical Robotics. Her presentation was entitled In Vivo Photoacoustic Image Guidance of Abdominal Surgery. Prof. Jerry Prince announced the award and congratulated Kelley on this great achievement.

Kelley’s award continues the 4-year winning streak of previous PULSE Lab winners and mentees of Prof. Bell in the NSF CSMR REU Program:

  • Kelley Kempski (2018)
  • Margaret Allard (2017)
  • Blackberrie Eddins (2016)
  • Alicia Dagle (2015)

Special thanks to Kelley’s graduate student mentor, Alycen Wiacek.

LCSR Announcement

ECE Department Announcement

Mechanical Engineering Department Announcement

Welcome to Theron Palmer

The PULSE Lab welcomes Theron Palmer. Theron received his B.S. degree in Bioengineering from the University of California, Santa Cruz. He will be matriculating as a student in the BME Department. Welcome Theron!

Prof. Bell Receives NIH Trailblazer Award

Prof. Bell received the NIH Trailblazer Award from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering to support our project entitled, A Machine Learning Alternative to Beamforming to Improve Ultrasound Image Quality for Interventional Access to the Kidney. This project is motivated by the clinical challenges surrounding artifacts in ultrasound images, specifically artifacts caused by multipath scattering and acoustic reverberations (which occur when imaging through the abdominal tissue of overweight and obese patients or visualizing metallic surgical tools). There are no existing solutions to eliminate these artifacts based on today’s signal processing techniques. The goal of this project is to step away from conventional signal processing models and instead learn from raw ultrasound channel data examples with state-of-the-art deep learning techniques that differentiate artifacts from true signals to deliver a new class of clearer, easier-to-interpret ultrasound images that we call CNN-Based images. This work will be completed in collaboration with Austin Reiter, PhD and Kelvin Hong, MD.

Two of our pioneering publications in this area include:

  • D Allman, A Reiter, MAL Bell, Photoacoustic source detection and reflection artifact removal enabled by deep learning, IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, 37(6):1464-1477, 2018 [pdf | datasets | code]
  • AA Nair, T Tran, A Reiter, MAL Bell, A deep learning based alternative to beamforming ultrasound images, IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, April 15-20, 2018 [pdf]
  • Additional related publications are featured here

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

We additionally have a pending patent for these ideas.

ECE Department Announcement

Whiting School of Engineering Announcement

LCSR Announcement

Malone Center for Engineering in Healthcare Announcement

HEMI Announcement

JHU Hub Announcement

JHU Engineering Magazine

Johns Hopkins Magazine

Alycen Wiacek Receives Student Travel Award to IEEE IUS 2018

PULSE Lab grad student Alycen Wiacek was selected by the IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium Organization Committee to receive a Student Travel Award to attend the 2018 IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium taking place October 22-25, 2018 at the Portopia Hotel, in Kobe, Japan. Alycen will give an oral presentation on her work entitled Clinical Feasibility of Coherence-Based Beamforming to Distinguish Solid from Fluid Hypoechoic Breast Masses. Congratulations Alycen!

Four Abstracts Accepted to IEEE IUS 2018

Four PULSE Lab abstracts were accepted for presentation during the 2018 IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium (IUS) to be held on October 22-25, 2018, at the Portopia Hotel in Kobe, Japan.

  1. A fully convolutional neural network for beamforming ultrasound images to be presented by Arun Nair in the session entitled Deep Neural Networks for Ultrasound Image Formation at 2:15 PM to 2:30 PM on Thursday, October 25 (label: 1J-4)
  2. Clinical feasibility of coherence-based beamforming to distinguish solid from fluid hypoechoic breast masses to be presented by Alycen Wiacek in the session entitled  Beamforming for Other Applications from 9:00 AM to 9:15 AM on Thursday, October 25 (label: 4H-5)
  3.  Segmenting bone structures in ultrasound images with Locally Weighted SLSC (LW-SLSC) beamforming  to be presented by Eduardo Gonzalez in the session entitled  Beamforming for Other Applications from 8:00 AM to 8:15 AM on Thursday, October 25 (label: 4H-1)
  4. Using deep neural networks to remove photoacoustic reflection artifacts in ex vivo tissue to be presented by Derek Allman in the session entitled All-Optical Photoacoustic Imaging and Computational Approaches on Tuesday, October 23 (label: P2-A6-4)

Congrats to Arun, Alycen, Eduardo, and Derek!

Symposium website: http://sites.ieee.org/ius-2018/

Journal Paper Accepted to Physics in Medicine and Biology

Our journal paper entitled Photoacoustic imaging of a human vertebra: implications for guiding spinal fusion surgeries was accepted for publication in Physics in Medicine and Biology. This paper will appear in the journal’s special issue Focus on Interventional Photoacoustic Imaging.  The accepted version of the manuscript is currently accessible online (ahead of print).

Citation: J Shubert and MAL Bell, Photoacoustic imaging of a human vertebra: Implications for guiding spinal fusion surgeries, Physics in Medicine and Biology (accepted) [pdf]

Prof. Bell Receives JHU Discovery Award

Dr. Muyinatu Bell and gynecologic surgeon collaborator Dr. Karen Wang were among the 30 interdisciplinary faculty teams at Johns Hopkins selected to receive one of the 2018 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 Image Guidance of Gynecological Surgeries.”

JHU Hub Celebration Coverage

JHU Office of Research Announcement

JHU Hub Announcement

Malone Center Announcement

HEMI Announcement

Whiting School of Engineering Announcement

ECE Department Announcement

Welcome to Summer Undergraduate Students Kelley, Jasmin, Bria, and Joanna

The PULSE Lab welcomes four undergraduate students who will be working with us this summer. They are pursuing undergraduate degrees from a mixture of universities around the country:

Kelley Kempski

  • University of Delaware (Newark, DE)
  • Biomedical Engineering major
  • NSF-funded REU student

Jasmin Palmer

  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, MA)
  • Mechanical Engineering major with a concentration in Controls, Instrumentation, and Robotics
  • Leadership Alliance student

Bria Goodson

  • Delta State University (Cleveland, MS)
  • Pre-Med/Biology major
  • McNair Scholar

Joanna Guo

  • Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, MD)
  • Biomedical Engineering and Computer Science double major

Each student will be working with us for 10 weeks or more throughout the summer on various projects in the area of photoacoustic-guided surgery. Welcome Kelley, Jasmin, Bria, and Joanna!!!

Prof. Bell selected to participate in the National Academy of Engineering’s US Frontiers of Engineering Symposium

Prof. Bell is one of 84 “outstanding early career engineers” selected to meet for an intensive 2-1/2 day symposium to discuss cutting-edge developments in four engineering areas at the National Academy of Engineering’s 2018 US Frontiers of Engineering Symposium. This symposium will be hosted by MIT Lincoln Laboratory in Lexington, Massachusetts, September 5-7, 2018.

ECE Department Announcement

Malone Center Announcement

NAE Announcement

Arun Presents A Deep Learning Based Alternative to Beamforming Ultrasound Images at IEEE ICASSP 2018

Congrats to Arun on the successful presentation of his research paper entitled “A Deep Learning Based Alternative to Beamforming Ultrasound Images” at IEEE ICASSP 2018 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. This work is the first to propose deep learning as an alternative to the traditional ultrasound beamforming process and it was implemented for a single plane wave transmission. Check out  our associated conference paper for more details!

Citation: Nair AA, Tran T, Reiter A, Bell MAL, A deep learning based alternative to beamforming ultrasound images, IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, April 15-20, 2018 [pdf]

Journal Paper Accepted to IEEE TMI

Congratulations to Derek Allman! His paper entitled “Photoacoustic Source Detection and Reflection Artifact Removal Enabled by Deep Learning” was accepted to the IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging. This paper is expected to appear in the Special Issue on Machine Learning for Image Reconstruction.

This work is the first to use deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) as an alternative to the photoacoustic beamforming and image reconstruction process. We used simulations to train CNNs to identify sources and reflection artifacts in raw photoacoustic channel data, reformatted the network outputs to usable images that we call CNN-Based images, and transferred these trained networks to operate on experimental data. Multiple parameters were varied during training (e.g., channel noise, number of sources, number of artifacts, sound speed, signal amplitude, transducer model, lateral and axial locations of sources and artifacts, and spacing between sources and artifacts). The classification accuracy of simulation and experimental data  ranged from 96-100% when the channel signal-to-noise ratio was -9 dB or greater and when sources were located in trained locations. Over 99% of the results had submillimeter location accuracy. Our CNN-Based images have high contrast,  no artifacts, and resolution that rivals the traditional photoacoustic image resolution of low-frequency ultrasound probes.

Citation: D Allman, A Reiter, MAL Bell, Photoacoustic Source Detection and Reflection Artifact Removal Enabled by Deep Learning, IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, 37(6):1464-1477, 2018 [pdf | datasets | code]

Prof. Bell will give CS Seminar on April 10

Prof. Bell will give a seminar to the JHU Computer Science Department on April 10th, 2018.

“Directing Light and Learning from Sound to Guide Surgeries”

Abstract

Just like programming a robot requires meticulous planning, coding, and execution, these same requirements are ever present when designing and controlling the individual optical and acoustic components of photoacoustic imaging systems. Photoacoustic imaging utilizes light and sound to make images by transmitting laser pulses that illuminate regions of interest, which subsequently absorb the light, causing thermal expansion and the generation of sound waves that are detected with conventional ultrasound transducers. The Photoacoustic and Ultrasonic Systems Engineering (PULSE) Lab is developing novel methods that use photoacoustic imaging to guide surgeries with the ultimate goal of eliminating surgical complications caused by injury to important structures – like major blood vessels and nerves – that are otherwise hidden from a surgeon’s immediate view.

In this talk, I will describe our novel light delivery systems that attach to surgical tools in order to direct light toward the surgical site. I will also introduce how we learn from the physics of sound propagation in tissue to develop acoustic beamforming algorithms that improve image quality, using both state-of-the-art deep learning methods and our newly developed spatial coherence theory. These light delivery and acoustic beamforming methods hold promise for robotic tracking tasks, visualization and visual servoing of surgical tool tips, and assessment of relative distances between the surgical tool and nearby critical structures (e.g., major blood vessels and nerves that if injured will cause severe complications, paralysis, or patient death). Impacted surgeries and procedures include neurosurgery, spinal fusion surgery, hysterectomies, and biopsies.

Bio

Muyinatu Bell is an Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering with a joint appointment in the Biomedical Engineering Department at Johns Hopkins University, where she founded and directs the Photoacoustic and Ultrasonic Systems Engineering (PULSE) Lab. Dr. Bell earned a B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering (biomedical engineering minor) from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2006), received a Ph.D. degree in Biomedical Engineering from Duke University (2012), and conducted research abroad as a Whitaker International Fellow at the Institute of Cancer Research and Royal Marsden Hospital in the United Kingdom (2009-2010). Prior to joining the faculty, Dr. Bell completed a postdoctoral fellowship with the Engineering Research Center for Computer-Integrated Surgical Systems and Technology at Johns Hopkins University (2016), where she was co-mentored by faculty in the Computer Science Department and the School of Medicine. Dr. Bell has published over 40 scientific journal articles and conference papers, holds a patent for short-lag spatial coherence beamforming, and is the recipient of numerous awards, grants, and fellowships, including the NIH K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award (2015), MIT Technology Review’s Innovator Under 35 Award (2016), and the NSF CAREER Award (2018).

[Watch seminar video / JHU login required]

Five PULSE Lab Abstracts Accepted to UITC 2018

PULSE Lab members will present the following five talks at the International Symposium on Ultrasonic Imaging and Tissue Characterization, May 30 – June 1, 2018:

  1. Application of robust short-lag spatial coherence beamforming to breast ultrasound data, Alycen Wiacek, Ole Marius Hoel Rindal, Kelly Fabrega-Foster, Susan Harvey, Muyinatu
    A. Lediju Bell, Johns Hopkins U. and U. Oslo
  2. Implications of theoretical photoacoustic spatial covariance for short-lag spatial coherence imaging, Michelle T. Graham, Muyinatu A. Lediju Bell
  3. Deep learning alternative to beamforming ultrasound images, Arun Asokan Nair, Trac D. Tran, Austin Reiter, Muyinatu A. Lediju Bell
  4. Deep learning for photoacoustic source detection and reflection artifact removal, Derek M. Allman, Austin Reiter, Muyinatu A. Lediju Bell
  5. Comparative study of CT-US registration performance with DAS and SLSC ultrasound beamforming techniques, Eduardo Gonzalez,  Michelle Graham,  Muyinatu A. Lediju Bell

Symposium website: http://uitc-symposium.org/

March 12 BME Seminar Hosted by Prof. Bell

Christine P. Hendon, PhD
Associate Professor
Department of Electrical Engineering
Columbia University

Monitoring and Guidance of Arrhythmia Therapy with Optical Imaging

Date: Monday, March 12, 2018
Time: 4:00 pm
Location: Clark 110, Homewood Campus
Video-teleconferenced to Traylor 709, East Baltimore Campus

Host: Dr. Muyinatu (Bisi) Bell

Paper Accepted to IEEE ICASSP

Congratulations to Arun Nair on the acceptance of his manuscript to the IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP).

Paper ID: 3434
Title: A DEEP LEARNING BASED ALTERNATIVE TO BEAMFORMING ULTRASOUND IMAGES
Session Title: ‘SAM Poster Session 4: Beamforming’
Authors: AA Nair, T Tran, A Reiter, MAL Bell

This conference will take place 15–20 April 2018.

[Preprint Available]

Prof. Bell featured in SPIE Women in Optics Planner

Prof. Bell is featured in the 2018 Women in Optics Planner produced by SPIE. This planner includes photos and interesting facts about highlighted women to introduce girls and young women to the possibilities of STEM careers. Five thousand copies of the planner are printed and distributed, free of charge, in more than 25 countries worldwide annually. SPIE Members, career counselors, science teachers, and community clubs can request free copies of this planner.

SPIE Newsroom Announcement

Prof. Bell’s Profile

Request a Copy

 

Prof. Bell Receives NSF CAREER Award

Congratulations to Prof. Bell for being selected to receive the NSF CAREER Award. The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program is a Foundation-wide activity that offers the National Science Foundation’s most prestigious awards in support of early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization.  The objective of Prof. Bell’s proposal entitled CAREER: Technical & Theoretical Foundations for Photoacoustic-Guided Surgery is to apply optical analyses, spatial coherence theory, and independent resolution models to describe fundamental performance limits of photoacoustic-based navigation during robotic and nonrobotic surgery.

ECE Department Announcement

Malone Center Announcement

WSE Announcement

JHU Hub Announcement

LCSR Announcement

JMI Paper Accepted

Congrats to undergraduate student Margaret Allard on the acceptance of her first-author journal paper entitled Feasibility of photoacoustic-guided teleoperated hysterectomies. This paper will appear in the Journal of Medical Imaging (JMI) Special Section on Image-Guided Procedures, Robotic Interventions, and Modeling.

This paper is the first to describe the feasibility of photoacoustic integration with the da Vinci surgical robot to potentially guide minimally invasive hysterectomies and other gynecological surgeries.  To implement photoacoustic imaging, a novel light delivery system was designed and implemented  to surround da Vinci tools. This new light delivery system uniquely enabled the investigations described in the paper, including  the first known analysis of the optimal tool orientations for photoacoustic-guided hysterectomies using a da Vinci scissor tool (which partially blocks the transmitted light in some cases). This work can be extended to other da Vinci tools and laparoscopic instruments with similar tip geometry.

Margaret completed this work through her participation in our NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates in Computational Sensing and Medical Robotics.

Brooke Wins Second Place in Undergrad Poster Competition

Congratulations to PULSE Lab undergraduate student Brooke Stephanian on her 2nd place win in the Optics and Photonics Conference at JHU! She presented a poster that summarized the work she completed this semester on the topic “Theoretical Simulation to Optimize Short-Lag Spatial Coherence (SLSC) Photoacoustic Image Quality”.

Conference website: https://engineering.jhu.edu/ece/osa/hopkins-photonics-conference/

Journal Paper Accepted to IEEE T-UFFC

Congrats to Arun Nair on the acceptance of his paper entitled “Robust Short-Lag Spatial Coherence Imaging” to the IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control. This paper will appear in the special issue on sparsity driven methods in medical ultrasound.

This work is the first to re-examine the lag summation step of the Short-Lag Spatial Coherence (SLSC) algorithm and achieve additional robustness to coherence outliers through both weighted summation of individual coherence images (i.e., M-weighting) and the application of robust principal component analysis (i.e., Robust SLSC, or R-SLSC). Results show great promise for smoothing out the tissue texture of SLSC images, improving boundary delineation, and enhancing anechoic or hypoechoic target visibility at higher lag values. These improvements could be useful in clinical tasks such as breast cyst visualization, liver vessel tracking, and obese patient imaging.

Citation: AA Nair, T Tran, MAL Bell, Robust Short-Lag Spatial Coherence Imaging, IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control (accepted) [pdf]

Also Available on Journal Website: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8166807/

Two PULSE Lab abstracts accepted to OSA Optics and Photonics Conference at JHU

Congrats to undergraduate student Brooke Stephanian and PhD student Derek Allman! Their abstracts were accepted to the 2017 Optics and Photonics Conference at Johns Hopkins University.

Brooke will present a poster entitled: Theoretical Simulation to Optimize Short-Lag Spatial Coherence (SLSC) Photoacoustic Image Quality 

Derek will give a presentation entitled: Using convolutional neural networks to eliminate reflection artifacts in experimental photoacoustic images

Conference details: https://engineering.jhu.edu/ece/osa/hopkins-photonics-conference/

Free registration: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/optics-and-photonics-conference-at-johns-hopkins-university-tickets-39142374897?aff=es2

Optics and Photonics Conference at Johns Hopkins University

The student chapter of the Optical Society of America at Johns Hopkins is hosting a day-long optics and photonics conference on Monday December 11, 2017.

The goal of this conference is to bring together leaders in the optical sciences from a wide range of subjects, to foster learning, collaboration, and to emphasize the impact optics and photonics have on a plethora of disciplines.

The conference will feature invited talks by the following researchers in various optics and photonics areas:

Nader Engheta
H. Nedwell Ramsey Professor, University of Pennsylvania

Jay Guo
Professor of Electrical Electronics and Computer Science, University of Michigan

Michelle Sander
Assistant Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, Boston University

Audrey Bowden
Associate Professor, Electrical Engineering Department, Stanford University

Giuliano Scarcelli
Assistant Professor, The Fischell Department of Bioengineering, University of Maryland

For more details: https://engineering.jhu.edu/ece/osa/hopkins-photonics-conference/

To register: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/optics-and-photonics-conference-at-johns-hopkins-university-tickets-39142374897?aff=es2

SPIE Medical Imaging Paper Accepted

Our paper, “Feasibility of photoacoustic guided hysterectomies with the da Vinci robot,” was accepted for Oral presentation at SPIE Medical Imaging in the Image-Guided Procedures, Robotic Interventions, and Modeling conference.

Session 2
Keynote and Medical Robotics

Tuesday 13 February 2018
10:10 AM – 12:10 PM

Feasibility of photoacoustic guided hysterectomies with the da Vinci robot
Paper 10576-9
Authors: Margaret Allard, Joshua Shubert, Muyinatu A. Lediju Bell

Congrats to Margaret, Josh, and Prof. Bell!

Three Abstracts Accepted to SPIE Photonics West

Three PULSE Lab abstracts were accepted to SPIE Photonics West in the BiOS Conference Track: Photons Plus Ultrasound: Imaging and Sensing 2018 (Conference 10494). This conference track will take place Sunday- Wednesday  January -28-31, 2018 at the The Moscone Center in San Francisco, California.

  1. A novel drill design for photoacoustic guided surgeries 
    Paper 10494-18
    Authors: Joshua Shubert, Muyinatu Bell
    Session 3: Therapy Monitoring and Guidance II
    Sunday 28 January 2018
    1:30 PM – 2:45 PM
  2. Using convolutional neural networks to eliminate reflection artifacts in experimental photoacoustic images
    Paper 10494-190
    Authors: Derek Allman, Austin Reiter, Muyinatu Bell
    Session PTue: Posters-Tuesday
    Tuesday 30 January 2018
    6:00 PM – 8:00 PM
  3. Development and validation of a short-lag spatial coherence theory for photoacoustic imaging
    Paper 10494-193
    Authors: Michelle Graham, Muyinatu Bell
    Session PTue: Posters-Tuesday
    Tuesday 30 January 2018
    6:00 PM – 8:00 PM

Congrats to  Josh, Derek, and Michelle!

Conference track website: https://spie.org/PWB/conferencedetails/photons-plus-ultrasound

IEEE IUS 2017 Recap

We just returned from a successful, invigorating, and inspiring IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium (IUS) held in Washington, DC at the Omni Shoreham Hotel. Some photograph highlights of our involvement appear below.

Joshua Shubert presented his poster entitled “Photoacoustic Based Visual Servoing of Needle Tips to Improve Biopsy on Obese Patients”

Derek Allman presented his poster entitled “A Machine Learning Method to Identify and Remove Reflection Artifacts in Photoacoustic Channel Data“

Prof. Bell served on the 2017 IUS Organizing Committee as the Communications Chair. She received a certificate  from the UFFC Society President (Clark Nguyen, left) and Vice President for Ultrasonics (Jafar Saniie, right) in appreciation of her service.

Michelle Graham (photo unavailable) also presented her poster entitled “Theoretical Application of Short-Lag Spatial Coherence to Photoacoustic Imaging.”

PULSE Lab members additionally collaborated to contribute to the following papers:

 

PULSE Lab Receives NVIDIA GPU Grant

The PULSE Lab is grateful to NVIDIA Corporation for donating a state-of-the-art Titan Xp GPU to support our clinical implementation of novel ultrasound and photoacoustic imaging algorithms.

Welcome to Alycen Wiacek

The PULSE Lab welcomes Alycen Wiacek. Alycen has a M.S. degree in ECE from Oakland University (Rochester, MI) and she completed her B.S. degree in ECE at Wayne State University (Detroit, MI). Welcome Alycen!

SLSC Beamforming Code Now Available on UltraSound Toolbox

The UltraSound Toolbox (USTB) is a free MATLAB toolbox for processing ultrasonic signals. The primary purpose of the USTB is to facilitate the comparison of imaging techniques and the dissemination of research results. The PULSE Lab is proud to collaborate on this effort to deliver SLSC beamforming to the broader ultrasound community. An example using the SLSC algorithm on a CIRS phantom and on human heart data was added today, as described here: http://www.ustb.no/examples/advanced-beamforming/short-lag-spatial-coherence-slsc/. The heart and phantom datasets and the SLSC code are now freely available to use. Additional datasets and beamforming code can be found by perusing the USTB website.

Congrats to Ole Marius Hoel Rindal (our visiting student from the University of Oslo) for putting in the work required to pull this together!

USTB Announcement

Welcome to Eduardo González

The PULSE Lab welcomes our newest graduate student, Eduardo González. Eduardo is a Fulbright Fellow from Peru, and he is a student in the JHU BME Department. Welcome Eduardo!

Margaret Allard Receives Best Presentation Award

Congratulations to PULSE Lab undergraduate student Margaret Allard who received the best presentation award from the NSF REU program in Computational Sensing and Medical Robotics. Her presentation was entitled Identifying Optimal da Vinci Tool Orientations for Photoacoustic Guided Hysterectomies. Prof. Jerry Prince presented Margaret with this award.

This award was shared by Margaret Allard and Mindy Wagenmaker.

JHU ECE Department Announcement

JBO Paper Accepted

Our paper entitled Photoacoustic-based approach to surgical guidance performed with and without a da Vinci robot was accepted for publication in the Journal of Biomedical Optics (JBO) Special Section on Translational Biophotonics.

Congrats to undergraduates Neeraj Gandhi and Margaret Allard!

This work was completed in partnership with the NSF REU in Computational Sensing and Medical Robotics along with collaborators Sungmin Kim and Peter Kazanzides, and it is the first to integrate photoacoustic imaging with the da Vinci surgical robot. It was also featured on the journal homepage.

ECE Department Announcement

BioOptics World Article

Summer Enrichment Camp Visits PULSE Lab

The Miracle City Summer Enrichment Camp (MCSEC) visited the PULSE Lab and learned about topics ranging from sonography to robot assisted ultrasound imaging and photoacoustic-guided surgery. Hands-on demonstrations enabled this inquisitive group of middle schoolers to scan an abdominal phantom, operate a neurosurgical drill, and teleoperatively manipulate the da Vinci robot arms in the LCSR mock operating room.

Three Abstracts Accepted to IEEE IUS 2017

Three PULSE Lab abstracts were accepted for presentation during the 2017 IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium (IUS) to be held on September 6-9, 2017 at the Omni Shoreham Hotel, Washington D.C., USA.

  1. “Theoretical Application of Short-Lag Spatial Coherence to Photoacoustic Imaging” to be presented by Michelle Graham in the MBB: Non linear and coherence imaging poster session, 3-4 pm on Thursday, September 7, 2017. (Abstract ID: 1526)
  2. “Photoacoustic Visual Servoing of Needle Tips to Improve Biopsy Targeting in Obese Patients” to be presented by Joshua Shubert in the MPA: Technical Developments in Photoacoustic Imaging poster session, 3-4 pm  on Friday, September 8, 2017. (Abstract ID: 1088)
  3. “Identification and removal of reflection artifacts in photoacoustic images using convolutional neural networks” to be presented by Derek Allman in the MIM: Machine learning poster session, 9:30-10:30 am on Saturday, September 9, 2017. (Abstract ID: 1523)

Congrats to Michelle, Josh, and Derek!

Symposium website: http://ewh.ieee.org/conf/ius/2017/

Welcome to REU Student Margaret Allard

The PULSE Lab welcomes NSF REU student Margaret Allard! She is an undergradute student majoring in Physics at Smith College, and she will be working with us through the 10 week Computational Sensing & Medical Robotics summer program.

Four PULSE Lab Presentations at UITC 2017

PULSE Lab members presented the following four talks at the International Symposium on Ultrasonic Imaging and Tissue Characterization, June 5-7, 2017:

  1. Principal component short-lag spatial coherence imaging (PC-SLSC), Arun Asokan Nair, Trac D. Tran and Muyinatu A. Lediju Bell
  2. Photoacoustic-based visual servoing of needle tips to improve surgery on obese patients, Joshua Shubert and Muyinatu Bell
  3. Theoretical application of short-lag spatial coherence to photoacoustic imaging, Michelle Graham and Muyinatu Lediju Bell
  4. Evaluation of a convolutional neural network for identifying reflection artifacts in photoacoustic imaging, Derek M. Allman, Austin Reiter and Muyinatu A. Lediju Bell

Michelle (left) and Derek (right) giving their first PULSE Lab research presentations:

Symposium website: http://uitc-symposium.org/

IEEE ISCAS 2017 Special Session: Innovations In Acoustics

Prof. Bell will co-chair the IEEE ISCAS 2017 Special Session entitled “Innovations In Acoustics”. This session will be held on May 29, 2017 at the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront in Baltimore, MD, and it provides unique access to acoustic researchers from various academic departments across Johns Hopkins University. This special session will cover acoustics on various levels, starting from background noise suppression in an electronic stethoscope, to bat echolocation processing to ultrasonic medical imaging and acoustic beamforming. It includes an invited talk from the father of microphone technology, Prof. Jim West, a National Medal of Technology and Innovation winner, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and a recipient of countless additional high honors. The session also includes a technical talk from a local ultrasound imaging start-up company (Sonavex, Inc.) formed based on ideas born here in Baltimore at Johns Hopkins University, which uniquely supports the conference theme “from Dreams to Innovation”.

Session Details

NIH R00 Grant Awarded

The PULSE Lab received the 2nd phase of Dr. Bell’s NIH K99/R00 award to support our project entitled “Coherence-Based Photoacoustic Image Guidance of Transsphenoidal Surgeries”. This work is motivated by the clinical challenges surrounding the removal of pituitary tumors using the minimally invasive endonasal transsphenoidal approach, which incurs the deadly risk of causing injury to the internal carotid arteries. We propose to eliminate this risk by developing a sophisticated photoacoustic imaging system that visualizes blood vessels located behind bone during the surgical operation. This photoacoustic imaging system will be equipped with our novel coherence-based beamformers and our specialized light delivery systems.

JHU ECE Announcement

Invited Seminars by Prof. Bell in March 2017

Prof. Bell will give the following invited seminar in March 2017:

Johns Hopkins BME Seminar Series
Monday, March 6, 2017
1:30 pm
Traylor 707-09 School of Medicine Campus
(video conferenced to Clark 110)
flyer

University of Southern California BME Seminar Series
Friday, March 10, 2017
2:30 pm – 4:00 pm
Denney Research Center (DRB 146)
flyer

Prof. Bell featured in JHU Magazine


Prof. Bell is featured in the Impact section of the winter issue of the JHU Engineering magazine. The article, entitled Clearer Vision for Surgeons, focuses on our lab’s latest venture to integrate photoacoustic imaging with a daVinci surgical robot in collaboration with researchers in the Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics.

Prof. Bell Serves on GRACE Panel

Prof. Bell is the faculty advisor to the newly formed Graduate Association [of women] in CS & ECE (GRACE) group on campus. She served on a panel of technical and academic experts who fielded questions from the audience during the kick-off mentoring dinner

JHU ECE Announcement

Three Abstracts Accepted to SPIE Photonics West

Three abstracts from the PULSE Lab were accepted to SPIE Photonics West, which will take place January 28 – February 2, 2017 in San Francisco, California:

  • Paper 10064-18: A machine learning approach to identifying point source locations in photoacoustic data (29 January 2017 • 5:30 – 7:30 PM)
  • Paper 10064-101: Optimizing light delivery for a photoacoustic surgical system (29 January 2017 • 3:00 – 3:15 PM)
  • Paper 10064-125: Accuracy of a novel photoacoustic-based approach to surgical guidance performed with and without a da Vinci robot (29 January 2017 • 5:30 – 7:30 PM)

SPIE Newsroom Announcement

SPIE Press

Full Conference Program

New Course

Prof. Muyinatu Bell is teaching EN.520.631, Ultrasound and Photoacoustic Beamforming, during the Fall 2016 semester. This is a new course that she is developing.

REU student wins first place award

Congratulations to PULSE Lab undergraduate student Blackberrie Eddins for winning the first place final presentation award in the 2016 NSF Computational Sensing and Medical Robotics (CSMR) Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program at JHU! She tied in first place for this award with Luke Arend, another student participant.

IEEE TBME Paper Accepted

Prof. Bell’s co-authored paper, “System integration and in-vivo testing of a robot for ultrasound guidance and monitoring during radiotherapy”, has been accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering.

STEM Dialogue

Dr. Bell makes a guest appearance on The STEM Dialogue, a podcast series designed to expose high school students to the world of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math:

Additional episodes of this podcast series are available by visiting:

http://stemdialogue.podbean.com/

Welcome REU Students

Welcome to undergraduate students Blackberrie Eddins and Neeraj Gandhi who will be working with us this summer through the NSF Computational Sensing and Medical Robotics (CSMR) Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program.

BioRob Paper Accepted

Our paper, Feasibility of photoacoustic image guidance for telerobotic endonasal transsphenoidal surgery, which describes the first telesurgical photoacoustic image-guided navigation system setup implemented on a research da Vinci Surgical System, has been accepted as an oral presentation at the 6th IEEE RAS/EMBS International Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics, June 26-29, 2016, in University Town, Singapore.