Plane Wave – Vol. 3, Issue 9 – 2019 Wrap-up: Verasonics Expands Innovation in Ultrasound and Strengthens its Commitment to Support Customers Worldwide

Welcome to the ninth issue of Volume 3 of PLANE WAVE, Verasonics’ Newsletter through which we share information about new products and technologies, emerging applications, conferences, training opportunities, and collaborations with researchers in ultrasound and ultrasonic technologies.  We hope you find these newsletters informative and interesting, and welcome your suggestions for future topics.

New Products and Applications ▪ Technology Information ▪ Research ▪ Conferences and Training

This year has been an exciting year for Verasonics with many new developments. As a company founded with the objective to help scientists and engineers create new ways of using ultrasound, we want to say thank you to our customers for helping to make the Vantage™ Research Ultrasound platform the leading research ultrasound product in the world. Our goal is to continually provide the best products and the highest levels of support to our customers. Here are some of the organizational and product highlights from 2019.

2019 Highlights:

Verasonics Experiences Significant Growth and Expands its Operations:

Vantage Research Ultrasound Systems are now used by scientists and engineers in 34 countries across North and South America, Europe and the Middle East, Asia, Australia and New Zealand. There are now over 2000 published research studies that reference the Verasonics technologies. To reinforce its commitment to providing comprehensive sales and customer support, Verasonics expanded its support operations worldwide.

New operations include:

• Verasonics BV, a new affiliate entity located in the Netherlands. This new entity is established to provide improved efficiencies with the importation process for customers in the European Union (EU) countries who purchase Vantage Systems and accessories.
• To better support growth in the EU, and particularly in Germany, Austria and Italy, Verasonics has established a new team to assist researchers seeking to acquire Vantage Research Ultrasound Systems.
• Verasonics also recently relocated its UK office to the Oxford Innovation Center in Bristol. Oxford Innovation has an outstanding track record in supporting and accelerating high growth businesses through its network of Innovation Centers.
• Verasonics is expanding in Latin America with an office in Colombia intended for R&D and tailored local customer support.

Verasonics Adds Professor Mickael Tanter to its Scientific Advisory Board (SAB):

In 2018, Verasonics established a SAB comprised of ultrasound research scientists and leaders with a broad spectrum of expertise across a variety of application areas in biomedical ultrasound and materials science. The SAB assists Verasonics to gain insight and feedback on potential new product concepts from thought leaders in the field of research ultrasound. This month, Professor Mickael Tanter, Director at Physics for Medicine in Paris, France, joined the Verasonics SAB. Professor Tanter is considered a pioneer in the field of ultrafast ultrasound and has developed medical applications based on his research in this area. The entire Verasonics Team is honored to have Professor Tanter on the SAB. Learn more.

Expanding the Vantage Research Ultrasound platform with products and features including:

Volume Imaging Package Suite of Solutions

Verasonics continues to pioneer new methods of acquiring volume datasets with high-channel-count techniques (using multiple Vantage 256™ systems) and multiplexed acquisition (using a single Vantage 256 system). The latter approach, using the UTA 1024-MUX with a single Vantage 256 system, allows researchers to obtain images with identical resolution as compared to multiple Vantage 256™ systems by trading off acquisition speed using multiple apertures. In particular, Verasonics’ MUX switch topology permits using random-sparse-aperture approaches in which each acquisition leads to a useful image. The use of complementary random apertures and synthetic acquisitions allow the user to find a compromise between frame rate and image quality that is most suitable for their application.

HIFUPlex™, an Ultrasound-Guided Platform to Advance Pre-Clinical Research in Focused Ultrasound

In collaboration with the Focused Ultrasound Foundation and Sonic Concepts, Verasonics is introducing a number of enhancements to the HIFUPlex portfolio of products. There are two new Focused Ultrasound Packages in development called HIFUPlex PLUS that will provide turn-key solutions for ultrasound-guided focused ultrasound research. The HIFUPlex PLUS 1000 is designed for small animal investigations, and the HIFUPlex PLUS 3000 for expanded research capabilities for large animals. Anticipated availability is in the first quarter of 2020. Key features include:

• Easy-to-use transducer positioning technologies for optimal treatment control
• Rotation of the imaging transducer for capturing multiple 2D slices of the 3D volume
• Enhanced GUI for 3D treatment planning and delivery
• Thermal Strain Imaging for treatment monitoring

Artificial Intelligence (AI) Capability

To assist users who want to work with AI techniques, Verasonics has developed a tutorial to guide users through the steps of creating an application that leverages machine learning to detect arbitrary objects in ultrasound image data.

The tutorial provides four easy steps demonstrating how to:

1. Extract image data for training using the new process-storage-class feature,
2. Interactively select the target objects for training the classifiers,
3. Setup training parameters and train common classifier models, and
4. Perform real-time classification and object detection in a script using the external function.

This feature takes advantage of the robust tools provided by the MATLAB™ Statistics and Machine Learning Toolbox.

New User-Programmable Image Reconstruction

For Vantage users working with materials that have different speed-of-sound characteristics, or different properties of refraction, Verasonics has enhanced its image reconstruction software to include User-Programmable Image Reconstruction. This new capability provides the following benefits:

• The image reconstruction delays can be programmed by the user on an individual pixel basis
  • Delay tables can be produced that take into account speed-of-sound variations and refractive properties
  • These tables can be dynamically updated
• The number of channels supported was increased to over 10,000
• Maximum depth of reconstruction was increased to 2 meters at 3 MHz
• Support for multiple elements connected to same channel
• Reconstruction accuracy improved by adopting floating point processing
• Dramatic reduction in memory requirements (typically by more than 80%)
• Support for row/column array types
• Faster reconstruction speed (over 40 million pixels/sec for 128 channels)

Full-page Graphical User Interface (GUI)

To improve the ease with which one can do imaging using the Vantage System, Verasonics is developing a new GUI that provides access to:

• Common ultrasound-imaging controls
• Mode selection for access to certain high-image-quality scripts and some basic imaging modes
• Basic measurements such as distance and area
• A customizable data management system for capturing, storing, annotating and exporting receive-data, images and clips
• No MATLAB-programming experience required

Data File Storage Capability

Verasonics has developed a new process class to define data export and import operations to files stored on disk. The new storage-class feature is incorporated within the sequence-programming framework and provides an efficient method to sequentially import and export receive or image data at any event in the acquisition sequence. Furthermore, the tool offers an optimized on-the-fly data compression procedure for fast streaming and minimal storage.

The Verasonics Community Portal 

In 2018, Verasonics introduced the Verasonics Community portal. The Verasonics Community is designed to provide quick and easy access to helpful tools for training and product information, along with a programming script repository, and is available at no cost 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In the past year the Verasonics Community has grown with the addition of new training videos, product documentation and user-contributed programming scripts.

Already a customer? View the latest training tips, tricks and videos, here.