Ultrasonic Lamb modes typically propagate as a combination of multiple dispersive wave packets. Frequency components of each mode distribute widely in time domain due to dispersion and it is very challenging to separate individual modes by traditional signal processing methods. In the present study, a method of dispersion compensation is proposed for the purpose of mode separation. This numerical method compensates, i.e., compresses, the individual dispersive waveforms into temporal pulses, which thereby become nearly un-overlapped in time and frequency and can thus be extracted individually by rectangular time windows. It was further illustrated that the dispersion compensation also provided a method for predicting the plate thickness. Finally, based on reversibility of the numerical compensation method, an artificial dispersion technique was used to restore the original waveform of each mode from the separated compensated pulse. Performances of the compensation separation techniques were evaluated by processing synthetic and experimental signals which consisted of multiple Lamb modes with high dispersion. Individual modes were extracted with good accordance with the original waveforms and theoretical predictions.

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To investigate the relationship between ultrasonic backscatter and trabecular microstructure, ultrasonic backscatter measurements were performed on cylindrical bovine cancellous bone samples in vitro. The backscatter signals from different specimen angles were obtained by rotating the specimen at various central frequencies. The backscatter signal varied a lot as the specimen angle changed. The main trabecular alignment (MTA) orientation was estimated by the maximum of signal energy and integrated reflection coefficient, or the minor axis of fitted ellipse for apparent integrated backscatter and the backscattered spectrum centroid frequency versus specimen angle. The degree of anisotropy (DA) was estimated by the eccentricity of the fitted ellipse with highly significant correlations. The MTA orientation and DA value estimation method proposed in this study is useful for ultrasonic cancellous bone assessment.

BackgroundType 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) induces serious skeletal muscle atrophy. Low-intensity pulsed ultrasound (LIPUS) is a common treatment for skeletal muscle injury and is effective in accelerating the rate of muscle growth. However, to the best of our knowledge, whether LIPUS can improve skeletal muscle atrophy in type 1 diabetic rats has not been investigated.MethodsThe rats were randomly divided into four groups: the normal control group (NC); the sham-treated diabetic control group (DC); the diabetic, insulin-treated group (DI) as a positive control; and the diabetic LIPUS therapy group (DL). The DL rats were treated with LIPUS (1 MHz, 30 mW/cm2) on the gastrocnemius for 20 min/day.ResultsAfter 6 weeks, the rats in the DC group showed severe muscle atrophy. However, LIPUS significantly improved type 1 diabetes-induced muscle atrophy, as evidenced by significantly enhanced muscle cross-sectional area, muscle mass, and strength. Moreover, compared with the DC group, LIPUS significantly activated Akt and upregulated the expression of mTOR, and LIPUS downregulated the expression of MSTN, its receptor ActRIIB, and FoxO1.ConclusionsThese results indicate that LIPUS improved muscle atrophy induced by type 1 diabetes, and the MSTN/Akt/mTOR&FoxO1 signaling pathway may play a role in this improvement.

We present the theoretical design, numerical simulation, and experimental demonstration of a single-parameter-based underwater ultrasound cloaking of arbitrary objects based on metagrating. The carpet metagrating is implemented with periodic grooves, which circumvents the tedious calculations and extreme material responses of the conventional cloaking based on acoustic transformation theory, providing a simple design methodology and enabling easy fabrication in real-life scenarios. Particularly, we expand the working frequency range of this ultrasound cloaking to 100–900 kHz, which is commonly used in biomedical ultrasound and industrial testing. Our design with the advantages of extreme simplicity, robust concealment of sizeable objects, and potential broadband functionality will improve the applicability of ultrasound carpet cloaking for more realistic situations where the camouflage of the arbitrary target is needed.

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In this study, we investigated the feasibility of using photoacoustic time-frequency spectral analysis (PA-TFSA) for evaluating the bone mineral density (BMD) and bone structure. Simulations and ex vivo experiments on bone samples with different BMDs and mean trabecular thickness (MTT) were conducted. All photoacoustic signals were processed using the wavelet transform-based PA-TFSA. The power-weighted mean frequency (PWMF) was evaluated to obtain the main frequency component at different times. The y-intercept , midband-fit , and slope of the linearly fitted curve of the PWMF over time were also quantified. The results show that the osteoporotic bone samples with lower BMD and thinner MTT have higher frequency components and lower acoustic frequency attenuation over time, thus higher y-intercept , midband-fit , and slope . The midband-fit and slope were found to be sensitive to the BMD; therefore, both parameters could be used to distinguish between osteoporotic and normal bones ( p < 0.05).