Ultrasound-Assisted Laser Technique Vaporizes Artery Plaque

Method avoids complications from using high-power lasers, extends to other medical applications

Media Contact:
Larry Frum
AIP Media
301-209-3090
media@aip.org

DENVER, May 24, 2022 – Atherosclerosis, a buildup of plaque, can lead to heart disease, artery disease, and chronic kidney disease and is traditionally treated by inserting and inflating a balloon to expand the artery. Other treatments based on lasers can remove blockages rather than simply compressing them but are used infrequently, because they have a high risk of complication and low efficacy.

Rohit Singh, of the University of Kansas, and other researchers developed a method that combines a low-power laser with ultrasound to remove arterial plaque safely and efficiently. Singh will describe preliminary results in his presentation, “A novel ultrasound-assisted laser technique to remove atherosclerotic plaques,” at the 182nd Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America. The session will take place May 24 at 5:05 p.m. Eastern U.S. at the Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel.

High-power laser treatments direct thermal energy to vaporize water in the artery and create a vapor bubble, which expands and collapses to break the plaque. Similarly, the technology, pioneered by Xinmai Yang, doctoral advisor for the team, uses a low-power nanosecond pulsed laser to produce microbubbles. The addition of irradiation from ultrasound causes the microbubbles to expand, collapse, and disrupt the plaque.

“In conventional laser angioplasty, a high laser power is required for the entire cavitation process, whereas in our technology, a lower laser power is only required for initiating the cavitation process,” said Singh. “Overall, the combination of ultrasound and laser reduces the need for laser power and improves the efficiency of atherosclerotic plaque removal.”

Because it destroys rather than compresses the plaque, the combination technique will have a lower restenosis rate, or re-narrowing of the artery, compared to balloon angioplasty or stenting. The control provided by the ultrasound and the low-power laser will lower the risk of dissection and perforation in arteries.

The team performed ex vivo experiments on carotid artery plaque samples and pork belly samples, and they are currently planning to perform in vivo experiments. Both the laser and ultrasound techniques are commonly used by clinicians and should be easy to teach and implement following the in vivo studies.

Combining low-power lasers and ultrasound techniques is not limited to atherosclerosis treatments. Singh and collaborators are also using the methodology for photo-mediated ultrasound therapy and ultrasound-assisted endovascular laser thrombolysis. The former can be used to remove abnormal microvessels in the eye to prevent blindness, while the latter can dissolve blood clots in veins.

Singh will expand upon these additional applications in poster sessions at the ASA meeting, with “Analysis of cavitation induced stresses on blood vessel wall during photo-mediated ultrasound therapy using finite-element based numerical models” and “Combining ultrasound and endovascular laser for thrombolysis,” on May 25, 5-7 p.m. Eastern U.S.

———————– 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/.

Listening Can Be Exhausting for Older Cochlear Implant Users

Aging effects on listening effort in cochlear-implant users

Media Contact:
Larry Frum
AIP Media
301-209-3090
media@aip.org

DENVER, May 24, 2022 – Degraded acoustic signals can make hearing difficult for anyone, but differences in cognitive abilities, age-related changes, and the use of cochlear implants may exacerbate the problem. If it is more challenging to hear, it is also exhausting to communicate.

In her presentation, “Aging effects on listening effort in cochlear-implant users,” Kristina DeRoy Milvae will discuss the results of two experiments that examined impacts on listening effort. The session will take place May 24 at 12:50 p.m. Eastern U.S. at the 182nd Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America at the Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel.

The first experiment measured how changes in acoustic signal degradation affected listening effort in younger and older adults with normal hearing. Pupil dilation was used as a proxy for listening effort. As people age, highly degraded signals can result in listeners needing to exert even more effort.

In the second experiment, Milvae and her team tested how individual differences in working memory scores affected listening effort in cochlear implant users. Lower working memory scores did not predict increased listening effort.

“A better understanding of listening effort gives a more holistic picture of how we hear,” said Milvae. “Measures of listening effort can help us to better understand the cochlear implant listening experience and help the scientific community to work toward evidence-based approaches to improve listening effort in populations with hearing loss.”

The team’s results emphasize the importance of developing practices to reduce listening effort. Milvae sees three potential paths forward: technological advances in cochlear implants to improve signal clarity, secondary cochlear implants for some users, and aural rehabilitation measures.

“With a cochlear implant, one may be able to better communicate in a noisy restaurant than without. It may take some effort, but with that effort comes the social interaction that was not possible before,” she said. “What is clinically important is to help those who are constantly in a state of high listening effort, which could lead to fatigue and reduced quality of life, because they will want to avoid these social situations.”

———————– 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/.

Diverse Social Networks Reduce Accent Judgments

Perception in context: How racialized identities impact speech perception

Media Contact:
Larry Frum
AIP Media
301-209-3090
media@aip.org

DENVER, May 24, 2022 – Everyone has an accent. But the intelligibility of speech doesn’t just depend on that accent; it also depends on the listener. Visual cues and the diversity of the listener’s social network can impact their ability to understand and transcribe sentences after listening to the spoken word.

Ethan Kutlu, of the University of Iowa, will discuss this social phenomenon in his presentation, “Perception in context: How racialized identities impact speech perception,” which will take place May 24 at 12:15 p.m. Eastern U.S. as part of the 182nd Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America at the Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel.

Kutlu and his team paired American, British, and Indian varieties of English with images of white and South Asian faces. While the accents differed, they were all normalized to have the same base intelligibility. They played these voices for listeners from a low-diverse (Gainesville, Florida) and high-diverse environment (Montreal, Quebec).

“Racial and linguistic diversity in our social networks and in our surrounding environments impact how we engage in perceiving speech. Encountering new voices and accents that are different from our own improves our ability to attend to speech that varies from our own,” said Kutlu. “We all have accents and embracing this is not hurting our own or others’ speech perception. On the contrary, it helps all of us.”

A participant’s ability to transcribe sentences decreased and they rated voices as more accented whenever the speech was paired with a South Asian face – no matter the English variety of the spoken word. Indian English paired with white faces was judged as heavily accented when compared to British and American English.

However, these results varied greatly by the listener’s social network and geographic context. Montreal participants, residents of a dual language city, were overall more accurate when transcribing speech. They did not change their judgments based on the faces they saw on the screen.

———————– 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/.

Sidekick Microbubbles Carry Anti-Cancer Drugs, Damage Tumor Vessels

Ultrasound-stimulated, drug-loaded bubbles for cancer therapy

Media Contact:
Larry Frum
AIP Media
301-209-3090
media@aip.org

DENVER, May 24, 2022 – Microbubbles can assist with localized drug delivery in a patient’s body by popping at a target site to create enhanced permeability of tumor blood vessels. By temporarily increasing the porosity of the blood vessels, the microbubbles can create a means for coinjected anti-cancer drugs to preferentially leak into the tumor for treatment.

Naomi Matsuura, of the University of Toronto, and her team are adapting microbubbles to become more potent tools for cancer therapy. By shrinking the bubbles and directly loading them with anti-cancer drugs, the bubbles can lower the dose of free drug that is injected and diffuses into nontumor tissue in the body. This results in more targeted treatment and fewer side effects for the patient.

Matsuura will discuss her team’s results in her presentation, “Ultrasound-stimulated, drug-loaded bubbles for cancer therapy,” as part of the 182nd Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America at the Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel. The session will take place May 24 at 11:30 a.m. Eastern U.S.

The team loaded taxanes, a commonly used anti-cancer drug, onto the bubbles. Because the drug is hydrophobic, it avoids water and sticks to the bubble easily, avoiding any leakage into the bloodstream or surrounding tissue until the bubble is stimulated by ultrasound.

They plan to extend the bubbles to carry other types of drugs as well, but the drug loading tends to be lower and less stable for hydrophilic materials.

“We are also modifying the pattern of the sound waves in a way that makes the anti-cancer drug more potent in comparison to a regular intravenous drug injection,” said Matsuura.

“If we can combine lower side effects from direct drug loading with a more potent effect of the drug by modifying systems that are already in place for patients, we have a chance to make an impact on the outcomes of cancer patients in a relatively short period of time.”

———————– 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/.

Acoustic Sensors Pinpoint Shooters in Urban Setting

Modeling and optimizing sensor networks for a specific environment will help missions narrow in on shooter locations

Media Contact:
Larry Frum
AIP Media
301-209-3090
media@aip.org

DENVER, May 23, 2022 – During a gunshot, two sound events occur: the muzzle blast and the supersonic shock wave. Acoustic sensors, such as single or arrays of microphones, can capture these sounds and use them to approximate the location of a shooter.

As part of the 182nd Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America at the Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel, Luisa Still, of Sensor Data and Information Fusion, will discuss the important factors in determining shooter localization accuracy. Her presentation, “Prediction of shooter localization accuracy in an urban environment,” will take place May 23 at 12:45 p.m. Eastern U.S.

In an urban setting, buildings or other obstacles can reflect, refract, and absorb sound waves. The combination of these effects can severely impact the accuracy of shooter localization. Preemptively predicting this accuracy is crucial for mission planning in urban environments, because it can inform the necessary number of sensors and their requirements and positions.

Still and her team used geometric considerations to model acoustic sensor measurements. This modeling, combined with information on sensor characteristics, the sensor-to-shooter geometry, and the urban environment, allowed them to calculate a prediction of localization accuracy.

“In our approach, the prediction can be interpreted as an ellipse-shaped area around the true shooter location,” said Still. “The smaller the ellipse-shaped area, the higher the expected localization accuracy.”

The group compared their accuracy prediction to experimental performance under various geometries, weapons, and sensor types. The localization accuracy depended significantly on the sensor-to-shooter geometry and the shooting direction with respect to the sensor network. The smaller the distance between the shooting line and a sensor, the more accurate they could be with their prediction of the source. Adding more sensors increased the accuracy but had diminishing returns after a certain point.

“Each urban environment is too individual (e.g., in terms of layout, building types, vegetation) to make a general recommendation for a sensor set up,” said Still. “This is where our research comes in. We can use our approach to recommend the best possible setup with the highest accuracy for a given location or area.”

———————– 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/.

DeepSqueak Tool Identifies Marine Mammal Calls

User-friendly deep learning model analyzes bioacoustics signals from whales, dolphins

Media Contact:
Larry Frum
AIP Media
301-209-3090
media@aip.org

DENVER, May 23, 2022 – Lurking beneath the ocean’s surface, marine mammals use sound for navigation, prey detection, and a wide range of natural behaviors. Passive acoustic data from underwater environments can provide valuable information on these animals, such as their presence or absence within an area, their density and abundance, and their vocal response to anthropogenic noise sources.

As the size and number of acoustic datasets increase, accurately and quickly matching the bioacoustics signals to their corresponding sources becomes more challenging and important. This is especially difficult in noisy, natural acoustic environments.

Elizabeth Ferguson, from Ocean Science Analytics, will describe how DeepSqueak, a deep learning tool, can classify underwater acoustic signals at the 182nd Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America during her presentation, “Development of deep neural networks for marine mammal call detection using an open-source, user friendly tool.” The session will take place May 23 at 11:25 a.m. Eastern U.S. as part of the conference at the Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel.

Spectrograms show how acoustic signals of different frequencies vary with time. They look like heat maps, with brighter regions indicating higher sound intensity at that frequency and time. DeepSqueak uses deep neural network image recognition and classification methods to determine the important features within spectrograms, then match those features to specific sources.

“Although we used DeepSqueak to detect underwater sounds, this user-friendly, open source tool would be useful for a variety of terrestrial species,” said Ferguson. “The capabilities of call detection extend to frequencies below the ultrasonic sounds it was originally intended for. Due to this and the capability of DeepSqueak to detect variable call types, development of neural networks is possible for many species of interest.”

DeepSqueak was originally developed to classify ultrasound signals from rodents, but its neural network framework allows the technique to adapt to detect sounds at other frequencies. Ferguson and her team used the method and data from hydrophones on the Ocean Observatories Initiative’s Coastal Endurance Array to detect humpback whales, delphinids, and fin whales, which have highly variable calls with a wide range of frequencies.

———————– 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/.