This probably is the most complete proceedings available devoted to the engineering aspects of medical ultrasonic imaging research.
Topics covered are split nearly evenly between medical and nonmedical imaging. This balance of coverage provides the great value of this compilation for the dissemination of information between fields with common problems but vastly different applications. Medical imaging areas specifically addressed include breast carcinoma pathology and detection, heart modeling, cardiac echotomography at 2000 frames per second, collagen concentration and its relationship to ultrasound propagation, blood flow and arterial imaging and numerous improvements in the lateral resolution of B-mode scanning. Modalities proposed for improvements in these areas include large apertures, C-scanning, Bragg imaging, synthetic apertures, broad band doppler and refractive index reconstruction. A major improvement in the SRI through transmission camera is also demonstrated to decrease the high-contrast artifacts of its predecessors.
In the nonmedical fields of sonar, seismology, geology and metullurgy, methods for increasing resolution and sensitivity are reported. Techniques include shear and surface waves, bispectral analysis, velocity reconstruction, noise analysis, curvilinear holography and large array real time systems. One additional paper on velocity vector field reconstruction details a unique computation of 3-D flow analysis. Bridging the medical and nonmedical imaging disciplines are a number of transducer and transducer arrays in addition to reports on focusing techniques, scan converters, acoustic lenses, computer processing methods and diffraction patterns.
Over 70% of the articles contain abstracts and many of the accounts are found exclusively in this volume. However, most of the articles which do report on updates to previously published topics contain a rather complete summary of the data published elsewhere. I must recommend this volume highly for those seriously involved in scientific and engineering aspects of acoustical imaging as an informative overview of state-of-the-art research in all fields utilizing ultrasound radiation.