Medical Applications

Together with its clinical partners and advisory boards, Imperium is under development on a full line of medical imaging products for clinical use with DAV™. Our suite of Acoustocam™ imaging cameras* is focused on both imaging applications that current B-scan systems perform as well as expanded clinical uses that current ultrasound cannot satisfy. Images no longer exhibit unwanted speckle typically seen by conventional ultrasound images. Traditionally, B-scan ultrasound systems produce images which are perpendicular to the skin surface. Imperium's C-scan systems generate images which are parallel to the surface of the skin and records 2D plane images at different depths. Dr. Matthew Freedman of Georgetown University Medical Center writes: 

“The images shown provide additional information beyond that seen by conventional ultrasound, combining the images visible on conventional ultrasound and X-ray mammography.”
 

DAV™ C-scan of the index finger. Note lack of speckle & 'x-ray like' image.		Conventional B-scan of finger		Conventional B-scan of breast phantom cysts		DAV™ C-scan of breast phantom cysts

Compared to conventional B-mode ultrasound, C-mode has the following advantages:

• Much easier for non-specialists to interpret
• Inherently lower cost
• C-scan is free from speckle, an unwanted artifact seen on B-scan
• C-scan is free from geometric distortion seen on B-scan
• C-scan has far greater spatial resolution
• It takes multiple round trips to generate one B-scan image. Sending more and more pulses improves image quality, but it sacrifices refresh rate. C-scan requires only one round trip to generate a full field image. There is no technical need to image at less than 30 fps.
• C-scan images appear more naturally illuminated than B-scan images
• C-scan therefore does not include the shadows that normally streak across B-scans
• Structures in the C-scan appear to reflect ultrasound the way they would reflect light

A figure showing the difference between B-scan and C-scan is shown below: