London, Nov 5 (IANS) Doctors rely on ultrasound to determine the health of organs and other internal structures of the body. Now a Dutch researcher has developed a computer model that will improve the ultrasound's imaging capacity.
Koos Huijssen of Delft University of Technology (Netherlands) has developed a computer model that can predict the sound transmission of improved designs for ultrasound equipment.
The computer model is capable of processing large quantities of data and can be run on both a PC and a parallel supercomputer. Erasmus University Medical Centre and Oldelft Ultrasound are now using this programme to design a new sonographic transducer.
Koos Huijssen went in search of a computer model that could predict the behaviour of ultrasonic waves. Over the past 10 years, the images produced by ultrasound or sonography have been vastly improved by making partial use of the nonlinear nature of acoustic waves. Thanks to these developments ultrasound can now be used for a larger group of patients.
Further improvements could be realised by refining the sonography equipment, the transducer that generates the ultrasound and the imaging method, according to Delft release.
However, this requires a computer model that can accurately predict the transmission of ultrasound. With funding from Technology Foundation STW, Huijssen could develop a model which makes calculations over a 3-D area that is larger than what existing computer models can handle.
The major challenges in producing such a model are the enormous complexity of the problem and dealing with the required storage capacity and processing power. The model was developed in cooperation with the company VORtech Computing and it has an excellent level of performance.
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