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1A Ultrasound contrast agents: Theory and experiment

Nico de Jong, , Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, the Netherlands

The course consists of 4 topics:

1. Physics of microbubbles
   The basic physics of bubble vibration will be discussed. How does the bubble survive in a liquid. Models of the behavior of small bubbles in an ultrasound field. Simple models based on a one dimensional mass-spring system and more complicated models including gas and shell properties. How can we use these models.
2. Contrast imaging
   Imaging methods for contrast agents, e.g. fundamental, harmonic, subharmonic and superharmonic and multi-pulse methods like pulse inversion, power modulation etc. and new methods including chirp excitation and radial modulation.
3. Ultrasound contrast agent characterization
   Experimental acoustic methods for UCA will be presented for characterizing the bubbles in suspension, including harmonic and subharmonic scattering, absorption and attenuation. Also the influence of ambient pressure, temperature and gas concentration will be discussed. Further, optical and acoustical methods for characterizing individual bubbles.
4. Molecular imaging and therapy
   Molecular imaging and ultrasound mediated drug delivery: How to make these bubble, what are the characteristic. Also the interaction between mammalian cells and ultrasound in the presence of (targeted) bubbles will be discussed.

Nico de Jong graduated from Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands, in 1978. He got his M.Sc. in the field of pattern recognition. Since 1980, he has been a staff member of the Thoraxcenter of the Erasmus University Medical Center, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. At the Dept. of Biomedical Engineering, he developed linear and phased array ultrasonic probes for medical diagnosis, especially compound and transesophageal transducers. In 1986 his interest in ultrasound applications shifted toward the theoretical and practical background of ultrasound contrast agents. In 1993 he received his Ph.D. for "Acoustic properties of ultrasound contrast agents". His current interests are 3D (matrix) transducers, bubble behaviour for (molecular) imaging and therapy and fast framing camera systems. Since 1996 he organizes, together with the cardiologist Dr. Folkert ten Cate, the annual European Symposium on Ultrasound Contrast Imaging, held in Rotterdam and attended by approximately 175 scientists from all over the world. Since 2003 Nico de Jong is part-time professor at the University of Twente.

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2A Ultrasonic Motors: vibration generation, friction drive and energy harvesting

Minoru Kuribayashi Kurosawa, Department of Information Processing, Tokyo Institute of Technology

This course is designed to provide overview and a comprehensive understanding of ultrasonic motors. With a brief historical introduction, mainly, to researches and productions in Japan, we will examine the fundamentals of ultrasonic motors, including vibration generation, conversion from vibration to unidirectional motion through friction drive, and also energy harvesting to generate traveling wave for some application. We will review some actual ultrasonic motors; circular ring and pencil type traveling wave rotation motors, traveling wave linear motor, rotational hybrid vibration motor, degenerate mode standing wave linear motor, for example VSM, and so on. Some of them will be discussed about the efficiency and evaluation method for conversion mechanism from the electricity to mechanical output including losses in the system. For a traveling wave linear motor, to avoid standing wave generation, matching condition of a receiver transducer is important design factor. It will be also discussed that the receiver vibrator operation is similar to an energy harvest vibrator, which is hot topics now. Ultrasonic motors are excellent solution in micro actuator systems or MEMS also. For micro system, PZT film motors and SAW motors will be reviewed. The course will conclude with an overview of several recent applications, as well as discussion of current and potential advanced mechatronics applications of ultrasonic motors.

Minoru Kuribayashi Kurosawa received B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electronics in 1982 and 1984, respectively, from Tokyo Institute of Technology, and a Doctor degree in Engineering in 1990 from Tokyo Institute of Technology. In 1984, he joined Tokyo Institute of Technology as a Research Associate, where he was engaged in both mathematical modeling and experimental studies of ultrasonic motors (USM) and ultrasonic vibration systems. From 1992 to 1999, he was an Associate Professor at University of Tokyo in the Precision Mechanical Engineering Department. In 1999, he returned to Tokyo Institute of Technology. During his doctor researches at Tokyo Institute of Technology and after, Dr. Kurosawa was involved primarily in the theoretical and experimental aspects of ultrasonic motors. The fruit of his researches contributed to the USM by Canon Inc., Alps Electric Co., Taiheiyo Cement, Minolta, and ASULAB SA. Dr. Kurosawa is currently teaching and conducting research in the Department of Information Processing at Tokyo Institute of Technology at Yokohama. His research interests are in actuators, sensors, including piezoelectric film materials, echolocation system, motion control systems and application to robotics, etc.

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3A Medical Ultrasound Transducers

Douglas G. Wildes and L. Scott Smith, GE Global Research, Niskayuna, NY, USA

This course will provide an introduction to the design, fabrication, and testing of medical ultrasound transducers. Starting from an overview of the basic types of phased-array transducers (linear, convex, sector), we will discuss how the design for a probe is derived from its target application and how equivalent-circuit, finite-element, and acoustic field models can be used to optimize the design and accurately predict performance. A discussion of the structure of an ultrasound probe will lead to a survey of the different types of materials used in probes and their critical properties. Typical fabrication processes will be introduced and common problems in probe manufacturing will be summarized. Methods for evaluating completed transducers will be discussed. The course will highlight recent developments in probe technology, including single crystal piezoelectrics, cMUT transducers, catheters, 2D arrays, and electronics in probes, and will discuss performance advantages and fabrication difficulties which may be associated with each.

Douglas G. Wildes is a physicist with GE Global Research. He earned an A.B. in physics and mathematics from Dartmouth College and a Ph.D. in low-temperature physics from Cornell University, then joined GE in 1985. Since 1991, Dr. Wildes' research has focused on aperture design, fabrication processes, and high-density interconnect technology for multi-row and 4D imaging transducers for medical ultrasound. Dr. Wildes has 31 issued patents and 24 external publications. He is a member of the American Physical Society and a Senior Member of the IEEE.

L. Scott Smith leads the Ultrasound Probes Lab at GE Global Research. He earned B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in physics from the University of Rochester and the University of Pennsylvania respectively. Joining GE in 1976, he developed phased array probes for medical ultrasound. More recently, he led projects on adaptive acoustics and novel probe materials and methods. Dr. Smith has 51 issued patents and over 35 refereed publications. He is a member of the American Physical Society and a Senior Member of the IEEE where he serves as an Associate Editor for the Transactions on UFFC, and on this symposium's Technical Program Committee.

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4A Phonoic crystals

Vincent Laude, Institut FEMTO-ST, Université de Franche-Comté and CNRS, France
Tsung-Tsong Wu, Institute of Applied Mechanics, National Taiwan University, Taiwan

This course aims at providing an in-depth understanding and a perspective of the emerging field of phononic crystals and related phenomena. After a short introduction, the basic concepts of wave propagation in periodic media will be introduced, including the Bloch-Floquet theorem and band structures. The relevant peculiarities of acoustic waves in fluids and elastic waves in solids will be discussed. The formation of band gaps based on Bragg interference or local resonances will be explained and compared. With the introduction of defects, it will be shown how efficient phononic waveguides and cavities can be engineered. The case of surface acoustic waves and plate waves, of particular relevance to applications and devices, will be exemplified. Finally, a number of intriguing effects such as the occurrence of deaf bands and negative refraction will be explained and illustrated. Throughout the short course, extensive use of experimental results and numerical simulations will be made.

Vincent Laude holds a PhD in Physics from Université Paris-Sud and a Habilitation from Université de Franche-Comté, in 1994 and 2002, respectively. He is a CNRS research director and a group leader at Institute FEMTO-ST, Université de Franche-Comté, France. His research interests are in propagation of elastic and acoustic waves in micro & nanostructures, phononic crystals, and in enhanced elasto-optical interactions for strongly confined waves, especially in phoxonic crystals and fibers.

Tsung-Tsong Wu received Ph.D. degree in theoretical and applied mechanics from Cornell University in 1987. He joined the faculty of National Taiwan University in 1987 and currently is distinguished professor of the Institute of Applied Mechanics. Before 2000, Professor Wu's research was mainly on the elastic wave analysis and its applications to the NDE of materials. Since 2000, he has been involved in the areas of SAW sensors and phononic crystal, in particular, the application of phononic crystal to the SAW and the Lamb wave devices. He served as the Deputy Minister of the National Science Council of Taiwan from 2006-2008 and is a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

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5A Elasticity Imaging: Methods and Applications

Kathy Nightingale and Mark Palmeri, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Duke University, USA

The mechanical characterization of tissues and lesions within tissues has been used by clinicians to determine states of disease. Clinicians characterize the mechanical properties of tissue through manual palpation, but not all tissues are accessible through this approach. Therefore, imaging modalities that can provide information about the viscoelastic properties of tissues have been developed. This short course will explore the use of ultrasound in imaging the mechanical properties of tissue and lesions. The fundamentals of ultrasound imaging, as related to elasticity imaging, will be reviewed. A foundation for elastic material characterization will be established, including the relationships of force-displacement and stress-strain, the definition of elastic material properties (elastic moduli, Poisson's ratio, density), and the concept of stiffness, both structural and material. Linear isotropic materials will serve as the primary medium discussed in this course, but extensions will be made to anisotropic, viscoelastic, and nonlinear materials. Methods of static and dynamic excitation of soft tissue will be explored, using both external tissue compression/relaxation, and steady-state and impulsive acoustic radiation force excitation techniques. Imaging methods (MR and ultrasound) used to track static and dynamic displacement fields will be reviewed. Approaches for the reconstruction of material properties from these displacement fields will be discussed, including the use of inverse problems, the estimation of shear wave speeds, and the optimization and fitting of simplified viscoelastic and nonlinear tissue models.

Kathy Nightingale received her B.S. (electrical engineering) and Ph.D. (biomedical engineering) degrees in 1989, and 1997, respectively, from Duke University, having served in the United States Air Force from 1989 to 1992. Following her graduate work, she preformed research as an Assistant Research Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Duke University from 1997-2004, investigating acoustic radiation force based elasticity imaging methods. Dr. Nightingale is currently teaching and conducting research as the James L. and Elizabeth M Vincent Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Duke University. Her research interests include elasticity imaging, the use of acoustic radiation force in diagnostic imaging and therapeutic methods, and ultrasonic imaging.

Mark L. Palmeri received his B.S. degree in Biomedical and Electrical Engineering from Duke University, Durham, NC, in 2000. He was a James B. Duke graduate fellow and received his Ph.D. degree in Biomedical Engineering from Duke University in 2005 and his M.D. degree from the Duke University School of Medicine in 2007. He is currently an Assistant Research Professor in Biomedical Engineering and Anesthesiology at Duke University. His research interests include ultrasonic imaging, characterizing the mechanical properties of soft tissues, and finite element analysis of soft tissue response to acoustic radiation force excitation.

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1B Acoustic Microfluidics: Microscale Acoustics and Ultrasonics for Driving Fluids

James Friend, MicroNanophysics Research Lab., Dept. of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Monash University, Melbourne Centre for Nanofabrication, Melbourne, Australia

The transmission of acoustic waves through materials and across interfacial discontinuities is a centuries-old area of research. A rather curious application of ultrasonic acoustic radiation - actuation of fluids and particles within them - has renewed interest in this area and exposed phenomena that are not explained by previous theories once viewed as canon. During the talk applications of these phenomena will be proffered, including fingernail-sized microdevices to atomize sessile droplets for drug encapsulation, pulmonary drug delivery and nanoparticle formulation; devices for droplet jetting and manipulation; a device for fluid pumping and particle segregation in closed microfluidics structures; and a device to enable micro and nanoparticle concentration and separation in a sessile droplet in a matter of seconds. These technologies indicate the potential for ultrasonics to deliver on the many idyllic promises of microfluidics. Along the way, the underlying physical phenomena will be explored and explained, and the potential future of this area will bring the course to a close. This course will offer an overview of ultrasonics at small scales, including fabrication, piezoelectrics and fluid physics; proper analysis of ultrasonic field propagation in viscous fluids at small scales incorporating nonlinear phenomena with a review of classical terminology; and the many applications of the phenomena from fluid pumping and jetting to particle separation and organic chemistry enhancement.

James Friend is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, and received his B.Sci magna cum laude in aerospace engineering, M.Sci. and PhD in mechanical engineering from the University of Missouri-Rolla in 1992, 1994 and 1998, respectively. He is the associate editor of Biomicrofluidics, is a member of the IEEE Nanotechnology for Biology Committee, is on the advisory board of the Lifeboat Foundation for safe uses of nanotechnology, and a founding academic member of the $60 million Melbourne Centre for Nanofabrication. From 2001 to 2004, Dr. Friend was an assistant professor at the Precision and Intelligence Laboratory, Tokyo Institute of Technology. He joined Monash University in late 2004, and co-founded and co-directs the $7.5 million MicroNanophysics Research Laboratory with Associate Prof Leslie Yeo; the lab currently has a staff of three academics, five post-doctorates and thirteen PhD students. He has over one hundred peer-reviewed publications, with five book chapters, seventy-five peer-reviewed journal papers, and eighteen patents and patent applications in progress. He received excellence in teaching and early career researcher awards from the Monash Faculty of Engineering in 2007 and 2008, respectively, a Future Leader award from the Davos Future Summit in Sydney in 2008, and was named as one of the top 10 emerging scientific leaders of Australia by Microsoft and The Australian newspaper in 2009.

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2B Ultrasonic Signal Processing for Detection, Estimation and Compression

Jafar Saniie, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Illinois Institute of Technology
Ramazan Demirli, Center for Advanced Communications, Villanova University, Villanova, PA
Erdal Oruklu, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Illinois Institute of Technology

In ultrasonic imaging systems, the patterns of detected echoes, often complex and non-stationary, correspond to the shape, size, and orientation of the reflectors and the scattering properties of the propagation path. Therefore, signal modeling and parameter estimation of the nonstationary ultrasonic echoes is critical for image analysis, target detection, object recognition, deconvolution and data compression. In this short course, we present (1) modeling and classification of reverberant echoes, (2) time-frequency analysis and chirplet echo estimations, (3) detection and deconvolution of ultrasonic backscattered echoes using expectation-maximization and matching pursuit methods, (4) statistical signal processing techniques based on split-spectrum processing for detecting flaw echoes masked by high grain scattering noise, (5) discrete wavelet transform for 3D data compression, and (6) system-on-chip realization of detection, estimation, and compression algorithms using reconfigurable FPGA devices. This course will cover several case studies such detecting defects in steam generator tubes used in nuclear power plants, transducer pulse-echo wavelet estimation, subsample time delay estimation, thickness sizing of thin layers, and flaw detection in large grained materials.

Jafar Saniie (IEEE Fellow for contributions to ultrasonic signal processing for detection, estimation and imaging) received his B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland in 1974. He received his M.S. degree in Biomedical Engineering in 1977 from Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, and his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering in 1981 from Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN. In 1981 Dr. Saniie joined the Department of Applied Physics, University of Helsinki, Finland, to conduct research in photothermal and photoacoustic imaging. Since 1983 he has been with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Illinois Institute of Technology where he is the Filmer Professor, Director of the Embedded Computing and Signal Processing (ECASP) Research Laboratory, and Associate Chair and Director of Graduate Program. Dr. Saniie's research interests and activities are in ultrasonic signal and image processing, statistical pattern recognition, estimation and detection, embedded digital systems, digital signal processing with field programmable gate arrays, and ultrasonic nondestructive testing and imaging. In particular, he has performed extensive work in the areas of frequency-diverse ultrasonic target detection techniques, ultrasonic data compression, ultrasonic imaging of reverberant multilayer structures, time-frequency analysis of ultrasonic signals, and applications of neural networks for detecting flaw echoes and classifying microstructural scattering. Dr. Saniie has been a Technical Program Committee member of the IEEE Ultrasonics Symposium since 1987 (currently he is the chair of Sensors, NDE and Industrial Applications), Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control since 1994. He has over 210 publications and supervised 26 Ph.D. dissertations.

Ramazan Demirli received his MS and Ph.D. degrees in 1995 and 2000 respectively, both in Electrical Engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL. From 2000 to 2010 Dr. Demirli has worked in the industry, first at BrainMedia, LLC., New York, NY, assuming a major role in the development of a proprietary audio codec, then at Canfield Scientific, Inc., Fairfield, NJ, as a senior scientist involved in the research and development of skin imaging systems and software. Since June 2010, he has been with the Center for Advanced Communications, Villanova University, Villanova, PA, where he is now a Research Assistant Professor and the Director of the Acoustics and Ultrasound Lab. He specializes in statistical signal processing with extensive emphasis on ultrasound signal modeling and parameter estimation. His research interests include acoustic signal processing, ultrasound imaging and nondestructive evaluation, and image processing. Dr. Demirli is a Senior Member of IEEE.

Erdal Oruklu received his B.S. degree in Electronics and Communications Engineering from Technical University of Istanbul, Turkey in 1995, his M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey in 1999 and his Ph.D. degree in Computer Engineering from Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, Illinois in 2005. He joined Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Illinois Institute of Technology as an Assistant Professor in 2005. He is the director of VLSI and SoC Design Research Laboratory. Dr. Oruklu's research interests are reconfigurable computing, advanced computer architectures, hardware/software co-design, embedded systems and high-speed computer arithmetic. In particular, he focuses on the research and development of system-on-chip (SoC) frameworks for FPGA and VLSI implementations of realtime ultrasonic detection, estimation and imaging applications. Dr. Oruklu has more than 55 technical publications. He is a senior member of IEEE.

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3B Processing and Characterization Challenges for Integrated Ferroelectric/Piezoelectric Devices

Glen Fox, Fox Materials Consulting, LLC, Colorado Springs, CO USA

This course will provide a review of the challenges associated with integration of ferroelectric/piezoelectric thin film materials with standard CMOS processing and Si-based MEMS. Integration of ferroelectric/piezoelectric materials requires the use of electrode, barrier and encapsulation materials that are compatible with both the ferroelectric material and the established CMOS and MEMS processes. The course will start by presenting guidelines and examples for material choices, process methodology and contamination control while bearing in mind the relationship to the Si-based technology node and the integrated device specifications. It will then address the chemical, physical and processing requirements for optimization of the ferroelectric/piezoelectric material performance and the methods for characterization of the thin film properties critical to device functionality and reliability. Finally, examples of how device fabrication flow affects device architecture will be provided. The course relies heavily on examples and solutions found for integration of the PbZr_xTi_1-xO₃ ferroelectric system, but references to other ferroelectric/piezoelectric materials will be included.

Glen Fox is the President of Fox Materials Consulting, LLC, which was established in 2007 and specializes in the field of integrated ferroelectrics. Dr. Fox is also an Adjunct Profressor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs and Adjunct Researcher in the Department of Materials Science at The Pennsylvania State University. Before becoming a full time consultant, Dr. Fox worked for as a Senior Materials Scientist and Director of High Density FRAM Development at Ramtron International Corporation from 1997 to 2006. His work on joint development projects with Fujitsu and Texas Instruments resulted in processes, designs and testing methods that allowed for the manufacturing of non-volatile ferroelectric random access memory (FRAM) products ranging from 4 Kb to 4 Mb and test chips with densities up to 64 Mb. Under the direction of Dr. Fox, the first 2 Mb and 4 Mb commercial products manufactured on a 130 nm, CMOS logic process line were achieved. Dr. Fox received a B.S. in Ceramic Science and Engineering in 1987 and a Ph.D. in Solid State Science in 1992 from The Pennsylvania State University. After leaving Penn State, he joined the faculty of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland where he held research associate and assistant professor positions. Dr. Fox has been issued 12 patents related to ferroelectric random access memories and has authored or coauthored over 70 scientific journal articles, proceedings and book chapters. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE and member of the IEEE Administration Committee for Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics and Frequency Control.

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4B Ultrasound Imaging Systems: from Principles to Implementation

Kai E. Thomenius, Diagnostics and Biomedical Technologies, General Electric Global Research, Niskayuna, NY, USA

The design of medical ultrasound imagers is undergoing important changes brought about by advances in semiconductors and signal/image procession technologies. These changes are happening with as well as causing changes to medical practice and the utilization of medical imaging in general. Unique aspects of data acquisition and processing in the ultrasound scanner enable opportunities unavailable to other imaging modalities; key one of these being miniaturization. The goal of this course is to review the system design of ultrasound scanners from a linear systems point of view including transduction, beam formation, and image formation functions. The key points to be covered deal with methods of analysis of array data, the interaction of transmit and receive beams with clinically relevant targets, and how this interaction is used in the generation of clinically useful images. The last several years have seen steady migration of system functionality from hardware into software; most recently this has had an impact on the beamformation function. The changes this will bring to ultrasound scanners of the future and their application will be discussed.

Kai E. Thomenius is a Chief Technologist in the Diagnostics and Biomedical Technologies at General Electric Global Research facility in Niskayuna, NY, USA. His focus is on various aspects of Ultrasound and Biomedical Engineering. Previously, he has held senior R&D roles at ATL Ultrasound Inc., Interspec Inc., Elscint Inc., as well as other ultrasound companies. In addition, he has been an Adjunct Professor in the Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Dr. Thomenius' academic background is in electrical engineering with a minor in physiology; all of his degrees are from Rutgers University. His long-term interests have been in ultrasound beam formation and miniaturization of ultrasound scanners, propagation of acoustic waves in inhomogeneous media, delivery and drugs and DNA to cells, and determination of physiological information from the echoes that arise from such beams. Dr. Thomenius is a Fellow of the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine.

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5B Quantitative Ultrasound, Theory and Practice

William D. O'Brien, Jr., Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
Timothy J. Hall, Medical Physics Department, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
Michael L. Oelze, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
Timothy A. Bigelow, Departments of Eletrical and Computer Engineering and Mechanical Engineering, Iowa State University, USA
James A. Zagzebski, Medical Physics Department, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA

The course is designed to provide a broad overview and comprehensive understanding of quantitative ultrasound (QUS) techniques and applications that are based on backscatter analysis. The course will be initiated with a brief history of past QUS successes. It will then lead the participant into the theoretical basis of QUS from RF echo data, and specifically present approaches for the estimation of attenuation, backscatterer coefficient, envelope statistics, and compounding and spectral smoothing. QUS proof of concept will be documented from the echo data based on physical phantoms. Then, cross-platform (multiple array-based ultrasound imaging systems) studies will be presented that show that the QUS technologies yield substantial agreement for estimated QUS parameters (attenuation, backscatter coefficient, effective scatterer diameter, effective acoustic concentration, and envelope statistics parameters). Cross-platform results will be represented by both physical phantom and animal-based studies. Finally, the participant will be instructed how to use an on-line GUI to process on-line RF data, estimating backscatter and attenuation coefficients as well as effective scatterer size. The software used in these demonstrations is based on a graphical user interface that provides unified access to extensive Matlab algorithms for data analysis. Participants will gain the greatest experience if they bring a notebook computer equipped with Matlab (and its license). The software for data analysis, and example RF echo data, will be provided.

William D. O'Brien, Jr. received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in 1966, 1968 and 1970, respectively, from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. From 1971 to 1975 he worked with the Bureau of Radiological Health (currently the Center for Devices and Radiological Health) of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Since 1975, he has been at the University of Illinois where he is the Donald Biggar Willet Professor of Engineering, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Professor of Bioengineering, College of Engineering. He is also Professor of Bioengineering, College of Medicine. He is the Director of the Bioacoustics Research Laboratory, the laboratory that was founded by the late William J. Fry. His research interests involve the many areas of acoustic- and ultrasound-tissue interaction, including biological effects and quantitative acoustic imaging. He is a Life Fellow of IEEE, a Founding Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering, a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America and a Fellow of the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine (AIUM). He was Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control from 1985 to 2001. He has received the IEEE UFFC Achievement Award, Distinguished Service Award and Rayleigh Award. He has served at the IEEE UFFC President (1982 - 1983) and the AIUM President (1988 - 1991).

Timothy J. Hall received his B.A. degree in physics from the University of Michigan-Flint in 1983. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in medical physics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1985 and 1988, respectively. From 1988 to 2002, he was a faculty member of the Radiology Department at the University of Kansas Medical Center, where he worked on measurements of acoustic scattering in tissues, contrast-detail analysis in ultrasound imaging, and developing elasticity imaging techniques, including early development of materials for elasticity imaging phantoms. In 2003, he returned to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he is a Professor in the Medical Physics Department. His research interests continue to center on developing new image formation strategies based on acoustic scattering and tissue viscoelasticty and the development of test objects for system performance evaluation. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine.

Michael L. Oelze earned his B.S. degree in physics and mathematics in 1994 from Harding University in Searcy, AR, his M.S. degree in physics in 1996 from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette in Lafayette, LA, and his Ph.D. degree in physics in 2000 from the University of Mississippi in Oxford, MS. Dr. Oelze was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 2000 to 2004 conducting research in ultrasound. Specifically, during this time Dr. Oelze developed quantitative ultrasound techniques for classifying mammary tumors in rodent models of breast cancer. Currently, Dr. Oelze is an associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research interests include acoustic interaction with and characterization porous materials, tissue characterization, quantitative ultrasound, ultrasound bioeffects, ultrasound backscatter microscopy, ultrasound tomography techniques, ultrasound therapy, and application of coded excitation to ultrasound imaging. Dr. Oelze is a member of the ASA, a senior member of IEEE and IEEE UFFC, and a fellow of the AIUM.

Timothy A. Bigelow is an Assistant Professor with a joint appointment in Electrical/Computer Engineering and Mechanical Engineering at Iowa State University. His research interests focus on improving the diagnostic and therapeutic effectiveness of medical ultrasound. Specifically, he focuses on quantifying the physical properties of tissue for diagnostic purposes using backscattered ultrasound signals, applying ultrasound induced cavitation to destroy unwanted cells, and exploring new ultrasound induced biological effects for both ultrasound safety and ultrasound therapy applications. Dr. Bigelow graduated from the University of Illinois-Urbana in May 2004 with a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering where he worked under Dr. William D. O'Brien, Jr. in the Bioacoustics Research Laboratory. After completing his education, he was a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for a year. Dr. Bigelow was then an Assistant Professor in Electrical Engineering at the University of North Dakota for three years prior to coming to Iowa State University in August 2008.

James A. Zagzebski is Professor and Chair of the Medical Physics Department, School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Wisconsin, Madison. He also has tenure appointments in the Departments of Radiology and of Human Oncology, an affiliate appointment in Biomedical Engineering, and an Adjunct Professorship in the College of Health Sciences at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Dr. Zagzebski earned his BS Degree from Saint Mary's College, Minnesota in 1966 and a Masters in Physics at the University of Wisconsin Madison as he worked towards his Ph.D. in Radiological Sciences (medical physics, 1972) at the same school. His research interests are is in ultrasound imaging and quantitative imaging. He is a Fellow of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine and of the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine.