2026-04-24 カリフォルニア工科大学（Caltech）
At left, an illustration of the ultrasound tomography (UST) system developed by Lihong Wang and members of his lab. While a patient is submerged in a water tank, a lab-made ring-like structure made up of 512 transducers is used to scan up and down the body and image different cross-sections. At right, UST images of a human abdomen show how information is gathered from different types of measurements to produce images of organs and tissues inside the body.Credit: Caltech Optical Imaging Laboratory
＜関連情報＞
- https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/scanning-the-body-with-sound
- https://www.nature.com/articles/s41551-026-01660-4
全身の断面超音波断層撮影 Whole cross-sectional human ultrasound tomography
David C. Garrett,Jinhua Xu,Donghyeon Oh,Yousuf Aborahama,Geng Ku,Konstantin Maslov,William W. Tseng & Lihong V. Wang
Nature Biomedical Engineering Published:24 April 2026
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41551-026-01660-4
Abstract
Ultrasonography is a vital component of modern clinical care, with handheld probes routinely used for diagnostic imaging and procedural guidance. However, handheld ultrasound imaging is limited by factors such as the partial cross-sectional field of view, operator dependency, contact-induced distortion and lack of transmission contrast. Here we demonstrate a new system that enables whole cross-sectional ultrasound tomography of humans in both reflection and transmission modes. We generate two-dimensional images of the entire in vivo human cross-section in the abdomen and thighs with uniform in-plane resolution using a custom 512-element circular ultrasound receiver array and a rotating transmitter. Sequential scans with our system show strong agreement with clinical magnetic resonance imaging counterparts. To address unmet clinical needs, we explore two key applications. First, we observe abdominal adipose distributions in our images, enabling adipose thickness assessment without ionising radiation or mechanical deformation. Second, we demonstrate an approach for video-rate biopsy needle localization with respect to internal tissue features. These capabilities make whole cross-sectional ultrasound tomography a potential practical tool for clinical needs currently unmet by other modalities.
