Journal Article

Recent Advancements in High-Frequency Ultrasound Applications from Imaging to Microbeam Stimulation

Kim, Min Gon, Lim, Hae Gyun, Yoon, Changhan

2024

Overview

Ultrasound is a versatile and well-established technique using sound waves with frequencies higher than the upper limit of human hearing. Typically, therapeutic and diagnosis ultrasound operate in the frequency range of 500 kHz to 15 MHz with greater depth of penetration into the body. However, to achieve improved spatial resolution, high-frequency ultrasound (>15 MHz) was recently introduced and has shown promise in various fields such as high-resolution imaging for the morphological features of the eye and skin as well as small animal imaging for drug and gene therapy. In addition, high-frequency ultrasound microbeam stimulation has been demonstrated to manipulate single cells or microparticles for the elucidation of physical and functional characteristics of cells with minimal effect on normal cell physiology and activity. Furthermore, integrating machine learning with high-frequency ultrasound enhances diagnostics, including cell classification, cell deformability estimation, and the diagnosis of diabetes and dysnatremia using convolutional neural networks (CNNs). In this paper, current efforts in the use of high-frequency ultrasound from imaging to stimulation as well as the integration of deep learning are reviewed, and potential biomedical and cellular applications are discussed.

• Publisher: MDPI AG,MDPI
• Subject: Acoustics / Animals / Bandwidths / Blood / Breast cancer / Field programmable gate arrays / Health aspects / high-frequency ultrasound imaging / high-frequency ultrasound microbeam / Humans / Investigations / Machine learning / machine learning with high-frequency ultrasonic signals / Medical imaging equipment / Neural networks / Neural Networks, Computer / Review / Scanners / Ultrasonic imaging / Ultrasonic transducers / Ultrasonic Waves / Ultrasonography - methods / Zinc oxides