2007 IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium: Plenary Session

Welcoming and Administrative Remarks from the Organizing Committee

Opening of the Conference by the TPC Chair

Comments from the UFFC President and other Society Officers

Snapshots of Future Symposia

President's Speakers: Van C. Mow(1) and Elisa E. Konofagou(2)
Cartilage and Osteoarthritis: Biomechanics and Ultrasound

(1) Stanley Dicker Professor and Chair
(2) Assistant Professor
Department of Biomedical Engineering
Columbia University, New York, NY

Many important clinical diseases result from the breakdown of the structural integrity of the cells and tissues comprising an organ, thus preventing them from providing the physiological functions that nature had intended for them during life. Osteoarthritis is such a disease. It is one of the most prevalent debilitating diseases, striking one third of our population over the age of 60. Clinically, this disease is viewed as a failure of an organ (knee, hip, etc) stemming from the earlier (perhaps by decades) breakdown of a major tissue within these joints (articular cartilage). While there are many causes, and many variants (in the thousands) of this disease, the one unifying and underlying cause is the biological and structural breakdown of cartilage, the bearing material within these joints. For centuries, articular cartilage has been known to provide superb friction, lubrication and wear characteristics, often exceeding the best man-made bearings. However, only within the last 25 years or so, with the on-rush development of the discipline that which we call bioengineering today, with its advanced theories, computational and microscopy tools, and the simultaneous advances in cell and molecular biology, and biochemistry, has the fundamental etiological factors of cartilage breakdown, and hence osteoarthritis, beginning to be elucidated. Cartilage is an enigmatic tissue in that it appears to be featureless at the macro-level, while at the micro-level it has a highly organized, structural hierarchy ranging from the nano-scale (10-9m) to the micro-scale (10-3m), and it has a complex compositional makeup. From the material point of view, it is charged-hydrated-soft, anisotropic and inhomogeneous composite possessing a variety of complex material properties. When the tissue is loaded, these features give rise to complex stress, strain, fluid flow, electric, and swelling fields that affect the mechano-signal transduction processes controlling cellular biosynthesis within the tissue. In this lecture, a synopsis of our current understanding of this tissue will be presented, and suggestions of the use of ultrasound and elasticity imaging techniques to assess some qualities of the tissue from the normal state to the diseased will be discussed.

Dr. Van C. Mow received his Ph.D. in applied mechanics in 1966 from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and did his postdoctoral fellowship in applied mathematics at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, NYU, 1966-68, where he studied ocean waves, and a member of Technical Staff of Bell Labs, 1968-69 toward the development of programs for the anti-submarine sonar network off the East Coast of America. He returned to Rensselaer in 1969 when he began his biomechanics research. To deepen his understanding of physiology and orthopaedic surgery, he studied at Harvard Medical School, 1976-78. He is one of the earliest, and most recognized, biomechanicians in the world with 701 full-length, book chapters and meeting abstract publications, and he has edited 7 books. In addition, he has also delivered more than 500, plenary, keynote, invited and professional lectures worldwide. He was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering in 1991 and Institute of Medicine of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, 1998, and elected Academician of the Academia Sinica, Republic of China, 2004. He has served numerous elected offices of both medical and engineering professional society, chaired or served on NIH, NSF and NRC committees, and received numerous awards for his literature and professional contributions. He currently holds 9 honorary professorships in China and Hong Kong. For his contributions to ASME, and its Bioengineering Division, in 2004 ASME created the Van C. Mow Medal for outstanding bioengineers at mid career (10 - 20 years after graduation with a PhD and/or MD). Most recently, his alma mater RPI created the Annual Van C. Mow lecture series in Applied Mechanics in his honor.

Dr. Elisa Konofagou received her B.S. degree in Chemical Physics from Université de Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris VI in Paris, France and her M.S. degree in Biomedical Engineering from Imperial College of Physics, Engineering and Medicine in London, U.K., in 1992 and 1993, respectively. In 1999, Dr. Konofagou received her Ph.D. from the University of Houston in Biomedical Engineering for her work on elastography at the University of Texas Medical School in Houston, TX and then pursued her postdoctoral work in elasticity-based monitoring of focused ultrasound therapy at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA. Professor Konofagou is currently an Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Director of the Ultrasound and Elasticity Imaging Laboratory at Columbia University, New York, USA. She is also a member of the IEEE Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics and Frequency Control, the Acoustical Society of America and the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine. Her main interests are in the development of novel elasticity imaging techniques and therapeutic ultrasound methods, such as myocardial elastography, breast elastography, ligament elastography, harmonic motion imaging and ultrasound-induced brain drug delivery, with several clinical collaborations in the Columbia University Medical Center. She is author of over 90 published papers in the aforementioned fields. Dr. Konofagou is a technical committee member of the Acoustical Society of America and a technical standards committee member of the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine. She has also served as a special issue editor for the journal of Ultrasonics and is recipient of several awards including from the American Heart Association, the Acoustical Society of America, the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine, the National Science Foundation and the Radiological Society of North America.