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Whole cross-sectional human ultrasound tomography

nature.com

21–29 of 29 posts

Re: Whole cross-sectional human ultrasound tomography

#21
post #8

I did a tech deep-dive into the Midjourney tank, and this is basically the origin of that (the first author David Garrett worked at Midjourney for a while) so I have some thoughts on the tech. A ring of devices at 60cm (70cm for Midjourney) diameter means much longer distances than even the deepest tissue imaging ultrasound is typically used for. Geometric 1/r^2 attenuation through water and exponential attenuation t…

Do you need to fit that many sensors around the edge or can you rotate the ring of fewer sensors?

Re: Whole cross-sectional human ultrasound tomography

#22

The results really look rather blurry compared to the MRI... Presumably that's just a matter of better system modelling to fix?

Even if it's not the same resolution there's still benefits, a bit one that it will likely be WAY less expensive, both upfront and in maintenance, even after building the water tank. It might also replace a fair amount of routine ultrasound usage because of the reduction of operator skill.

Also, there's plenty of people who can't be in MRI machines, and likely a lot safer for everyone else.

Re: Whole cross-sectional human ultrasound tomography

#24
post #3

Relevant article: Scanning the Body with Sound https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/scanning-the-body-with-so...

Pictures are surely what everyone wants to see, thanks. Animation that looks similar below. I’m not sure its that similar to MRI, but there are clear advantages to using US and it’s a new technique which hopefully get better. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-04-body-ultrasound-captu...

Heck yeah! Thanks for posting.

Re: Whole cross-sectional human ultrasound tomography

#25
post #8

I did a tech deep-dive into the Midjourney tank, and this is basically the origin of that (the first author David Garrett worked at Midjourney for a while) so I have some thoughts on the tech. A ring of devices at 60cm (70cm for Midjourney) diameter means much longer distances than even the deepest tissue imaging ultrasound is typically used for. Geometric 1/r^2 attenuation through water and exponential attenuation t…

Do you need to fit that many sensors around the edge or can you rotate the ring of fewer sensors?

You need a full ring of sensors to be receiving at all times. The Caltech design has a rotating element that emits once at each location on the ring. The Midjourney design instead uses the same receiver elements to also emit one at a time, in turns. But wherever the emitter fires from, all the receivers need to be listening.

If you move a single sensor around then you need to multiply the scanning time by the same amount, and repeat the same "experiment" for each measurement position.

Re: Whole cross-sectional human ultrasound tomography

#26

This is cool! I've got a personal project in the works to build an ultrasound machine just to learn how it works. There's a lot of electronics design, PCB design, FPGA work etc that in learning. The probes themselves are used medical grade ones from ebay. The hard part is that there can be over hundreds of piezo elements each needing to receive on their own channel. That means lots of expensive ADCs. Not to mention e…

Do you have a GitHub? How do you source your parts?

Re: Whole cross-sectional human ultrasound tomography

#27

This is cool! I've got a personal project in the works to build an ultrasound machine just to learn how it works. There's a lot of electronics design, PCB design, FPGA work etc that in learning. The probes themselves are used medical grade ones from ebay. The hard part is that there can be over hundreds of piezo elements each needing to receive on their own channel. That means lots of expensive ADCs. Not to mention e…

Do you have a GitHub? How do you source your parts?

Not yet. Once I've got it working haha.

For the probe, you can find loads of them on ebay.

For the electronics. Digikey, JLCPCB etc.

Re: Whole cross-sectional human ultrasound tomography

#28

This is cool! I've got a personal project in the works to build an ultrasound machine just to learn how it works. There's a lot of electronics design, PCB design, FPGA work etc that in learning. The probes themselves are used medical grade ones from ebay. The hard part is that there can be over hundreds of piezo elements each needing to receive on their own channel. That means lots of expensive ADCs. Not to mention e…

Have a look at this open source ultrasound project for some inspiration! https://un0rick.cc/ Also my personal project which was inspired by un0rick but a bit simpler: https://williammeng.com/rtl-ultrasound.html

Neat! I didn't know you could use an SDR for that!

Re: Whole cross-sectional human ultrasound tomography

#29

This is cool! I've got a personal project in the works to build an ultrasound machine just to learn how it works. There's a lot of electronics design, PCB design, FPGA work etc that in learning. The probes themselves are used medical grade ones from ebay. The hard part is that there can be over hundreds of piezo elements each needing to receive on their own channel. That means lots of expensive ADCs. Not to mention e…

Have a look at this open source ultrasound project for some inspiration! https://un0rick.cc/ Also my personal project which was inspired by un0rick but a bit simpler: https://williammeng.com/rtl-ultrasound.html

Ha Will, fancy seeing you there !
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