2aBAb1 – Using ultrasound imaging to predict type1 diabetes development

Richard KP Benninger – richard.benninger@cuanschutz.edu
University of Colorado Anschutz medical campus
1775 Aurora Ct
Aurora, CO. 80045

Popular version of 2aBAb1 – Applying ultrasound phase-change contrast agents to guide therapeutic intervention in type 1 diabetes
Presented Tuesday morning, May 24th, 2022
182nd ASA Meeting
Click here to read the abstract

Type1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease in which the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas are destroyed. As a result people with type1 diabetes have to take insulin for the rest of their life. This is not a cure, and as well as the significant patient burden there are still risks for complications of diabetes that include eye, kidney and heart damage, as well as potentially falling into a coma from insulin overdose and low blood sugar. Strategies have been developed to prevent type1 diabetes through immune therapies that stop the destruction of insulin producing cells. Treatment early in the disease process, before significant destruction of insulin producing cells will be needed. However it is challenging to predict if an individual will get type1 diabetes and when, limiting the ability to intervene early.

Imaging approaches have been explored to detect the presence of autoimmune disease and concurrent inflammation in the pancreas, and loss of the insulin-producing cells. However there have been limited successes. A potential approach is based on the blood vessels become leaky during the autoimmune disease and inflammation in the pancreas. Thus small particles below 1um diameter can leak and accumulate in the diseased tissue. We have proposed to leverage the inherent advantages of ultrasound imaging that include deployability, cost-effectiveness and safety profile. Ultrasound contrast agents consist of gas filled bubbles (microbubbles). However the size of thee microbubbles means that they cannot access diseased tissue and are restricted to blood vessels. We have utilized a novel phase-change ultrasound contrast agent that consists of a condensed liquid droplet that is stable at body temperature and in circulation. However the acoustic beam from an ultrasound transducer can vaporize these droplets into microbubbles that provide ultrasound contrast. Thus these phase-change agents serve as circulating microbubble precursors that can access diseased tissue.

We tested whether these ultrasound phase change agents can access the injured tissue in the pancreas resulting from autoimmune disease, and whether accumulation of the contrast agents could be detected in ultrasound imaging. We found in pre-clinical models of type1 diabetes that significant accumulation of ultrasound phase change agents were observed in the pancreas, which was measurable by ultrasound (Figure 1). This accumulation correlated with the presence of autoimmune disease and decline in insulin-producing cells. Importantly the accumulation and ultrasound contrast was only present in the pancreas in models of diabetes: no accumulation was observed in non-diseased tissues. Further the accumulation of ultrasound phase change agents and ultrasound contrast correlated with the development of diabetes: models that developed diabetes rapidly or lacked therapeutic prevention showed a much higher contrast than those models that  developed diabetes slowly or showed therapeutic prevention of diabetes. Most importantly elevated contrast was measured very early in the disease process, earlier than the current gold standard measurement of circulating insulin autoantibodies.

diabetes

Figure 1: Conventional B-mode and contrast mode images before and after infusion and activation of phase-change ultrasound contrast agent. P=Pancreas, K=Kidney, S=Spleen.

As such the use of phase-change ultrasound contrast agents shows significant promise for detecting and tracking the presence of autoimmune disease and inflammation in the pancreas that heralds the development of type1 diabetes (Figure 2). Such a measurement would guide therapeutic intervention to prevent type1 diabetes, as well as assess the efficacy of such a treatment. Successful disease prevention will avoid the need for lifelong insulin therapy and complications of diabetes.

diabetes

Figure 2: Schematic illustrating use of phase-change ultrasound contrast agents to detect autoimmune disease in the pancreas.

1pPA1 – Ammonia chemistry: Sounds better with ultrasound

Dr. Prince Nana AMANIAMPONG, prince.nana.amaniampong@univ-poitiers.fr
CNRS Chargé de Recherche (CRCN)
Bâtiment B1, Rue Marcel Doré, TSA41105
86073 – Poitiers Cedex 9 (France)

Popular version of 1pPA1 – Ammonia chemistry: Sounds better with ultrasound
Presented Monday morning, May 23, 2022
182nd ASA Meeting
Click here to read the abstract

Hydrazine (N2H4) is a chemical of outmost importance in the chemical industry. The global hydrazine market was valued at 510.95 million USD in 2020, and is projected to reach 806.09 million by 2030, mostly boosted by the growing need of our society for the manufacture of polymer foams and agrochemicals. Moreover, hydrazine is used in space vehicles in the form of propellant to reduce the overall concentration of dissolved oxygen. The direct production of hydrazine from ammonia (NH3) is economically and environmentally highly attractive, but it remains a very difficult task. One of the reason stems from the high bond dissociation energy of N-H bond in NH3 (435 kJ/mol), requiring harsh conditions of temperature and pressure, which are not compatible with the stability of hydrazine. Indeed the composition of hydrazine is thermodynamically more favorable than the conversion of ammonia to hydrazine, making the accumulation of hydrazine scientifically challenging.

In this work, we show that cavitation bubbles created by ultrasonic irradiation of aqueous NH3 at a high frequency, act as micro-reactors to activate and convert NH3 to amino species, without assistance of any catalyst, yielding hydrazine at the bubble-liquid interface (Figure 1). The compartmentation of the in-situ produced hydrazine in the bulk solution, which is maintained close to 30 °C, advantageously prevents its thermal degradation, a recurrent problem faced by previous technologies.

ammonia

Figure 1. Cavitation bubbles act as micro-reactors to activate ammonia towards hydrazine formation.

With this technology, a maximum hydrazine production rate of 0.17 mmol.L-1.h-2 in 7 wt. % ammonia solution was achieved (Figure 2). This work opens up new avenues toward the production of hydrazine for industrial and commercial applications using high frequency ultrasound activation technologies.

ammonia

Figure 2. Effect of NH3 concentration on the formation of hydrazine (525 kHz, 0.17 W/mL, 30 °C)

This is has been recently published in Angewandte Chemie International Edition, Anaelle Humblot et al., 60, 48, 25230-25234 (doi.org/10.1002/anie.202109516) and was also highlighted as the front cover image of the issue.

ASA Press Conferences Livestreamed from Denver, May 24

Media invited to register and attend in person or online — topics include raceway noise impacts on neighborhoods, getting rid of unwanted sounds during events, coral reef health

DENVER, May 13, 2022 – Press conferences at the 182nd Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America will be held Tuesday, May 24, at the Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel in Plaza Court 2. Media availabilities will focus on wide range of newsworthy sessions at the upcoming meeting from how racialized identities impact speech perception to the first sounds recorded from the Perseverance rover on Mars.

To register for in-person attendance, email media@aip.org. To watch the livestream virtually, please visit our registration page. Video recordings of the press conference sessions will be available by May 25 upon request.

ASA Press Conference Schedule – Tuesday, May 24 (topics/times subject to change)

11:30 a.m. ET / 9:30 a.m. MT

  • Acoustic Sensors Pinpoint Shooters in Urban Setting – Luisa Still, Fraunhofer FKIE Session 1aPAa6 – Prediction of shooter localization accuracy in an urban environment, Monday, May 23 at 10:45 a.m. MT
  • Ultrasound-Assisted Laser Technique Vaporizes Artery Plaque – Rohit Singh, Kansas University Session 2pBAa7 – A novel ultrasound-assisted laser technique to remove atherosclerotic plaques, Tuesday, May 24 at 3:05 p.m. MT
  • Snap, Crackle, Pop: Healthy Coral Reefs Brimming with Noise – Lauren A. Freeman, Naval Undersea Warfare Center Newport Session 3aAO4 – Coral reef & temperate coastal soundscape features evident in directional and omnidirectional passive acoustic time series, Wednesday, May 25 at 9:35 a.m. MT

1 p.m. ET / 11 a.m. MT

  • Making Racetrack Noise Bearable with Physics – Bonnie Schnitta, SoundSense, LLC Session 1aAA1 – Actions and mathematical modeling that will bring noise levels from a racetrack or raceway to a level the community will accept, Monday, May 23 at 9:05 a.m. MT
  • Explosions Help Probe Elusive Atmospheric Waves – Stephen Arrowsmith, Southern Methodist University Session 3aPA4 – The use of infrasound from repeating explosion sequences in Oklahoma to probe the atmosphere, Wednesday, May 25 at 8:55 a.m. MT
  • On Mars, NASA’s Perseverance Rover’s Playlist Like No Other – Baptiste Chide, Los Alamos National Lab Session 3pPA4 – Mars soundscape: Review of the first sounds recorded by the Perseverance microphones, Wednesday, May 25 at 1:45 p.m. MT
  • Offshore Wind Farms Could Disturb Marine Mammal Behavior – Frank Thomsen, DHI Group Session 4pAB5 – Operational underwater sound from future offshore wind turbines can affect the behavior of marine mammals., Thursday, May 26 at 2:25 p.m. MT

3 p.m. ET / 1 p.m. MT

  • Sidekick Microbubbles Carry Anti-Cancer Drugs, Damage Tumor Vessels – Naomi Matsuura, University of Toronto Session 2aBAb2 – Ultrasound-stimulated, drug-loaded bubbles for cancer therapy, Tuesday, May 24 at 9:30 a.m. MT
  • Diverse Social Networks Reduce Accent Judgments – Ethan Kutlu, University of Iowa Session 2aSC4 – Perception in context: How racialized identities impact speech perception, Tuesday, May 24 at 10:15 a.m. MT
  • Listening Can Be Exhausting for Older Cochlear Implant Users – Kristina DeRoy Milvae, University of Maryland Session 2aPP5 – Aging effects on listening effort in cochlear-implant users., Tuesday, May 24 at 10:50 a.m. MT
  • Turning Hearing Aids into Noise-Canceling Devices – Ryan M. Corey, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Session 3aPPb8 – Turn the music down! Repurposing assistive listening broadcast systems to remove nuisance sounds, Wednesday, May 25 at 11:45 a.m. MT

​

———————– MORE MEETING INFORMATION ———————–
USEFUL LINKS
Main meeting website: https://acousticalsociety.org/asa-meetings/
Technical program: https://eventpilotadmin.com/web/planner.php?id=ASASPRING22
Press Room: https://acoustics.org/world-wide-press-room/

WORLDWIDE PRESS ROOM
In the coming weeks, ASA’s Worldwide Press Room will be updated with additional tips on dozens of newsworthy stories and with lay language papers, which are 300 to 500 word summaries of presentations written by scientists for a general audience and accompanied by photos, audio and video. You can visit the site during the meeting at https://acoustics.org/world-wide-press-room/.

PRESS REGISTRATION
We will grant free registration to credentialed journalists and professional freelance journalists. If you are a reporter and would like to attend, contact AIP Media Services at media@aip.org. For urgent requests, staff at media@aip.org can also help with setting up interviews and obtaining images, sound clips, or background information.

ABOUT THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
The Acoustical Society of America (ASA) is the premier international scientific society in acoustics devoted to the science and technology of sound. Its 7,000 members worldwide represent a broad spectrum of the study of acoustics. ASA publications include The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (the world’s leading journal on acoustics), JASA Express Letters, Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, Acoustics Today magazine, books, and standards on acoustics. The society also holds two major scientific meetings each year. See https://acousticalsociety.org/.

5pBA4 – A noninvasive ultrasound device to treat urinary stones in pet cats

Adam Maxwell – amax38@uw.edu
Ga Won Kim – gawonkim@uw.edu
Elizabeth Lynch – elynch@apl.washington.edu
Brian MacConaghy – bmacconaghy@gmail.com
Eva Furrow – furro004@umn.edu
Jody Lulich – lulic001@umn.edu
Michael Borofsky – mborofsk@umn.edu
Michael R. Bailey – mbailey@uw.edu

Corresponding Author Address:
University of Washington
1013 NE 40th Street
Seattle, WA 98105

Popular version of 5pBA4 – A burst wave lithotripsy system for urinary stones in pet cats
Presented Friday, December 03, 2021
181st ASA Meeting, Seattle, WA
Click here to read the abstract

Like humans, cats grow stones in their kidneys. As these stones pass through the urinary tract, they can become stuck and block the outflow of urine. This obstruction can cause pressure in the kidney and may lead to kidney failure, pain, and other complications. Unfortunately, the minimally invasive technologies used in humans to break apart or remove stones can’t be used on a cat. A veterinarian’s only option for definitive treatment is a complex and costly surgery.

Our team has developed a new, noninvasive method to fragment kidney stones using a handheld ultrasound transducer placed against the skin of a patient. The ultrasound travels through the body and is focused onto a stone, were the high-amplitude pressure waves cause stresses that fracture the stone to pieces that are small enough to pass naturally through the urinary tract. This technology, called burst wave lithotripsy (BWL), has been demonstrated to be effective and safe in preclinical studies, and is now being tested in clinical trials in humans. The goal of this project was to adapt the technology to cats, so that we can provide a noninvasive option for treatment of their stones.

Because of the smaller anatomy of a cat vs. a human, the ultrasound transducer was scaled to a smaller size, and focused at a shorter depth from the skin where we anticipate the stones will be located. We also changed the ultrasound frequency emitted by the transducer. This characteristic controls the size of fragments remaining after the stone is broken apart. By using a higher frequency (650 kHz in cats vs. 350 kHz in humans), the stones are broken mostly into fragments less than 1 mm. Such fragments are usually small enough to pass through the ureter (the narrow tract between the kidney and bladder) and not obstruct urine flow.

BWL system designed for cats
Figure 1. The left image shows a BWL system designed for cats. The right image shows the small, handheld head of the therapy transducer, which is placed against the cat’s skin during a procedure.

We designed and built prototypes of the transducer and the electronics that power it. An ultrasound imaging probe was incorporated so a veterinarian or radiologist operating the system can use this imaging to target the stone before breaking it apart. The system was tested on natural feline stones in a benchtop experiment. Between 73-96% of the stone mass was reduced to fragments smaller than 1 mm, indicating a high probability of success in treatments.cat kidney stone

Figure 2. An ultrasound image of a cat’s kidney with a stone (yellow arrow). Ultrasound imaging is used to detect and target a stone.

cat calcium stone
Figure 3. (Left) A 3-mm natural feline calcium stone that was exposed to BWL and broke into several small fragments after treatment.

We are now preparing to perform veterinary clinical testing. Once its benefit is demonstrated, this technology could be made available as a safer and less invasive alternative to treat obstructing stones in cats. This work supported by NIDDK P01DK043881 and the EveryCat Health Foundation.

1aBAb1 – Acoustic intra-body communication using semi-guided waves through human body tissues

John O. Gerguis – jgerguis@purdue.edu
Mayukh Nath – nathm@purdue.edu
Shreyas Sen – shreyas@purdue.edu
Purdue University
516 Northwestern Ave
West Lafayette, IN, USA 47906

Popular version of 1aBAb1 – Ultrasonic intra-body communication using semi-guided waves through human body tissues
Presented Monday morning, November 29, 2021
181st  ASA Meeting in Seattle, Washington
Read the article in Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics

The considerable attention that the Internet of Things (IOT) received in the recent years, has led to the development of low-cost and miniaturized devices. One of the fields that had a chance to benefit from this development is the Body Area Network (BAN), which is a network across the human body used to connect wearable and implantable devices.

Traditionally, Radio Frequency signals are used for the communication between devices across the BAN, which suffer from high losses and lack of security. Recently, electro-quasistatic human body communication, that uses the body as a wire, has emerged as an alternative – enabling low-power communication, and ultra-low leakage from human body (Das et al., 2019).

Acoustic waves have a better ability than Radio Frequency waves to propagate through water-dominant media, like the human body, besides being safe and physically secured in the body. Hence, ultrasounds present a promising alternative for the communication between wearable and/or implantable devices across the BAN.

In this work, a theoretical study was presented to explore the possibility of using ultrasounds for the communication between devices attached on the body. The ultrasound waves are confined inside the human tissues (muscle, fat and skin), thus a secure communication can be achieved, making it difficult for eavesdroppers to snoop the transmitted signal. (see Figure 1).

communication

Figure 1 “Intrabody communication between wearable devices through ultrasonic waves”

The confinement is achieved by avoiding the bone, a highly-attenuative tissue (has an attenuation of almost an order of magnitude higher than the other main tissues of the body), by having a total internal reflection on the bone/muscle interface through oblique incidence of ultrasounds on that interface. From the other side, the high acoustic impedance mismatch between the air and the skin, the outer layer of the human body, allows high reflection of the signal at the skin/air interface (~99.9%), thus confining most of the signal inside the body. By using directional acoustic wave propagation through the body and using total internal reflection, besides avoiding the bone, non-line-of-sight communication can be achieved as well between wearable devices with longer separations. This communication mechanism might be suitable in regions with thick bone (e.g. the leg).

Simulations are performed at an acoustic frequency of 100 kHz on a simplified cylindrical-shaped human body model, consisting of concentric layers of the four main tissues that form the human body: bone, muscle, fat and skin.

Figure 2. Total internal reflection of the acoustic waves on the bone.

Total internal reflection on the bone is shown in Figure 2 , where a transmitter is placed in location A and the receiver should be placed in location B. Figure 3(a) shows a ray tracing for the transmitted acoustic wave from the transmitter to the receiver, while Figure 3(b) shows the power density distribution at the receiver site. A communication between wearable devices across a distance of around 1m is shown to be possible with losses < 50 dB and with leakage signal which is >20 dB below the received signal, hence making the communication secure.

Figure 3(a). Ray tracing for the transmitted acoustic waves from the transmitter to the receiver.

 Figure 3(b). Power density distribution at the receiver site.

2pCA8 – Sonic boom propagation using an improved ray tracing technique

Kimberly Riegel – kriegel@qcc.cuny.edu
William Costa
George Seaton
Christian Gomez
Queensborough Community College
222-05 56th Avenue
Bayside, NY 11364

Popular version of 2pCA8 – Sonic boom propagation in a non-homogeneous atmosphere using a stratified ray tracing technique’
Presented Tuesday afternoon, November 30, 2019
181st ASA Meeting
Click here to read the abstract

Supersonic air travel could reduce flight times by half, vastly improving long range air travel. To make this type of travel commercially viable, however, the current ban on overland flight would need to be lifted while ensuring residents below are still protected from the high noise levels in the flight paths of these new aircraft. There has been a recent increase in supersonic aircraft investment. United Airlines just invested in 15 supersonic jets provided by BOOM supersonic. These aircraft are expected to fly in 2029 but will remain restricted to over water flight. Lockheed Martin in partnership with NASA is building a low boom demonstrator aircraft. This aircraft is expected to perform some community-based test flights next year. Therefore, a computationally efficient prediction tool that can predict the impact of sonic booms in urban areas would be a useful tool for researchers and legislators.

Previously a ray tracing simulation tool to predict the sound behavior in urban environments was developed. The simulation included the ability to read in 3D renderings of the environments. This made it possible to simulate any complicated shape including detailed buildings and multiple buildings. All surfaces are represented by a mesh of triangular faces. The more complicated the building, the more triangles were required to accurately represent it. The biggest limitation of the code was that it could take several days to complete one simulation of a complicated building. The purpose of this work is to reduce the computational time to make the numerical simulation more accessible while not sacrificing the accuracy of the results.

In order to reduce the computation time for complex geometries the entire environment was cut into horizontal slices. Only the slice where the origin of the ray is considered at a time. This allows for a significant reduction in the number of building facets that needs to be assessed for each step. Figure 1 shows the total building in grey and the slice under consideration in green.

 

[IMAGE MISSING]
Figure 1. Representation of a simple building/ray interaction and the vertical slices where the building is segmented.

To determine how the modifications to the code improved the result, several environments were run and compared to those environments for previous version of the code. Table 1 shows the improvements. From the timing of the different versions of the code it is clear that updates to the code have drastically reduced the computation times for complex environments. The resulting pressures at the receivers have no noticeable difference in the pressure results. This will improve the useability of the simulation and make it more convenient to predict sonic booms in urban areas.