Supersonic shear imaging: a new technique for soft tissue elasticity mapping

Supersonic shear imaging (SSI) is a new ultrasound-based technique for real-time visualization of soft tissue viscoelastic properties. Using ultrasonic focused beams, it is possible to remotely generate mechanical vibration sources radiating low-frequency, shear waves inside tissues. Relying on this concept, SSI proposes to create such a source and make it move at a supersonic speed. In analogy with the "sonic boom" created by a supersonic aircraft, the resulting shear waves will interfere constructively along a Mach cone, creating two intense plane shear waves. These waves propagate through the medium and are progressively distorted by tissue heterogeneities. An ultrafast scanner prototype is able to both generate this supersonic source and image (5000 frames/s) the propagation of the resulting shear waves. Using inversion algorithms, the shear elasticity of medium can be mapped quantitatively from this propagation movie. The SSI enables tissue elasticity mapping in less than 20 ms, even in strongly viscous medium like breast. Modalities such as shear compounding are implementable by tilting shear waves in different directions and improving the elasticity estimation. Results validating SSI in heterogeneous phantoms are presented. The first in vivo investigations made on healthy volunteers emphasize the potential clinical applicability of SSI for breast cancer detection.     

Viscosity measurement of Newtonian liquids using the complex reflection coefficient

This work presents the implementation of the ultrasonic shear reflectance method for viscosity measurement of Newtonian liquids using wave mode conversion from longitudinal to shear waves and vice versa. The method is based on the measurement of the complex reflection coefficient (magnitude and phase) at a solid-liquid interface. The implemented measurement cell is composed of an ultrasonic transducer, a water buffer, an aluminum prism, a PMMA buffer rod, and a sample chamber. Viscosity measurements were made in the range from 1 to 3.5 MHz for olive oil and for automotive oils (SAE 40, 90, and 250) at 15 and 22.5degC, respectively. Moreover, olive oil and corn oil measurements were conducted in the range from 15 to 30degC at 3.5 and 2.25 MHz, respectively. The ultrasonic measurements, in the case of the less viscous liquids, agree with the results provided by a rotational viscometer, showing Newtonian behavior. In the case of the more viscous liquids, a significant difference was obtained, showing a clear non-Newtonian behavior that cannot be described by the Kelvin-Voigt model.     

Dynamics of Polymeric Fluids：Part Ⅱ The Molecular Theory of Die Swell： Correlation of Ultimate Die Swelling Effect to the Molecular Parameters and the Operational Variables

A general expression for the correlation of the simple shear (tan ) to the molecular parameters and the shear rate ( ) was deduced. It shows that the simple shear (tan ) may be resolved into free recoil (recoverable strain) and viscous heating (unrecoverable strain). The magnitudes of the simple shears for recoil (tan E) and (tan V) for viscous heating not only depended on the molecular parameters and the operational variables, but also on the exponential fractions of the recoverable (1- ) and unrecoverable ( ) conformations for recoil and viscous heating. Therefore the magnitudes of the simple shears (tan E) for recoil and (tan V) for viscous heating are, respectively, expressed as the partition function to the (1- )th power and the partition function to the ( )th power. Thus correlations of the total recoil and the ultimately recoverable strains to the molecular parameters [ , a, η0, GN0 and (1- )] and the operational variables ( ), (L=D) and tr) were deduced respectively, which show that at very different shear rates ( ) the polymeric liquids may exhibit a very different viscoelastic behaviors. After introducing the uniform two-dimensional extension, the definition of swelling ratio and the ratio of L to D [De=(L/D)], two expressions for the ultimate die swelling effect and the ultimate extrudate swelling ratio BEVT5 to the molecular parameters [ , a, η0, GN0 and (1- )] and the operational variables ( , (L/D) and tr) were obtained. The two correlation expressions were verified by the experimental data of high-density polyethylene (HDPE) which shows that the two correlation expressions can be used to predict the correlations of the ultimate extrudate swelling behaviors of polymeric liquids to the molecular parameters and the operational variables.     

The role of viscosity in the impulse diffraction field of elastic waves induced by the acoustic radiation force

Several ultrasound-based techniques for the estimation of soft tissue elasticity are currently being investigated. Most of them study the medium response to dynamic excitations. Such responses are usually modeled in a purely elastic medium using a Green's function solution of the motion equation. However, elasticity by itself is not necessarily a discriminant parameter for malignancy diagnosis. Modeling viscous properties of tissues could also be of great interest for tumor characterization. We report in this paper an explicit derivation of the Green's function in a viscous and elastic medium taking into account shear, bulk, and coupling waves. From this theoretical calculation, 3D simulations of mechanical waves in viscoelastic soft tissues are presented. The relevance of the viscoelastic Green's function is validated by comparing simulations with experimental data. The experiments were conducted using the supersonic shear imaging (SSI) technique which dynamically and remotely excites tissues using acoustic radiation force. We show that transient shear waves generated with SSI are modeled very precisely by the Green's function formalism. The combined influences of out-of-plane diffraction, beam shape, and shear viscosity on the shape of transient waves are carefully studied as they represent a major issue in ultrasound-based viscoelasticity imaging techniques.     

Measurement of the material properties of viscous liquids using ultrasonic guided waves

The theoretical basis for a testing tool in the form of a circular waveguide for measuring both the dynamic viscosity and the longitudinal bulk velocity of viscous liquids is presented. It is based on the measurements of the attenuation of the fundamental torsional mode, T(0,1), and the fundamental longitudinal mode, L(0,1), of the waveguide when immersed in the liquid. The modeling techniques to extract the shear viscosity and the longitudinal bulk velocity are explained and experimentally verified. Results for two viscous liquids are presented: good agreement between theory and experiment was obtained.     

Measurement of the properties of fluids inside pipes using guided longitudinal waves

A new technique for measuring the longitudinal bulk velocity and shear viscosity of a fluid contained inside a pipe without a need for extracting a sample from inside of the pipe is presented. It is based on the measurement of the change of the dispersion properties and attenuation of longitudinal guided modes propagating in the pipe due to the presence of the fluid. The technique to extract longitudinal bulk velocity and shear viscosity is discussed and experimentally demonstrated by measuring both low-viscosity (distilled water and glycerol) and highly viscous fluids. The measured properties of glycerol agreed well with conventional methods and literature data for both the longitudinal bulk velocity (within 0.8%) and the viscosity (within 4%). For highly viscous fluid, the accuracy of the velocity measurement was found to be reduced slightly (within 1%), and the viscosity measurement became more accurate (within 1%).     

Correlation of viscoelastic properties with solvation of regioregular poly(3-decylthiophene) films

Viscoelastic properties of regioregular poly(3-decylthiophene) films cast on gold electrodes and exposed to acetonitrile/LiClO4 solution were studied using high-frequency acoustic impedance. Values of shear moduli, G = G' + jG', were determined under conditions of potentiodynamic and potentiostatic electrochemical control, as functions of potential (0.0 < E/V < 0.8), temperature (5 < T/ degrees C < 70), and angular frequency (omega = 2pi f; 10 < f/MHz < 110). The effect of potential was small, of temperature was significant, and of frequency was dominant. The principle of time-temperature equivalence was used to construct master relaxation curves. Application of activation, Williams-Landel-Ferry, and Rouse-Zimm models shows the material to be quite different from other thiophene-based conducting polymers, namely, poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) and regioregular poly(3-hexylthiophene). Detailed exploration of the data reveals novel insights into the compositional origins--notably with regard to solvation--of the shear modulus behavior.     

A microfluidic surface acoustic wave sensor platform: Application to high viscosity measurements

Acoustic Love wave oscillators offer a great potentiality to integrated viscosity measurements thanks to a high sensitivity and the lack of moving parts. The main limitation is insertion losses that increase with viscosity. To overcome this limitation, this paper reports the use of microfluidic techniques with a poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) chip bonded on the Love wave device. Liquid flows of aqueous glycerol solutions up to 0.939 Pa s (939cP, 98% glycerol) have been tested in oscillator mode. These results are promising for the viscoelastic study of viscous liquids. Modelisation using the classical perturbation theory is discussed.     

Liquid crystalline elastomers: dynamics and relaxation of microstructure

The equilibrium mechanical response of nematic elastomers can be soft or hard depending on the relation between the imposed strains and the nematic director, in particular, if the local nematic director is able to respond by rotating. The dynamical response proves to be equally unusual. We examine the linear dynamic mechanical response of monodomain nematic elastomers under shear and the aspects of time-temperature superposition of the dynamical data across phase-transition regions. In the low-frequency region of the master curves, one finds a dramatic reduction of rubber plateau modulus and the rise in internal dissipation: in the shear geometries compatible with dynamic soft elasticity. Power-law variation of the storage modulus with frequency G' proportional, variant omega(a) agrees very well with the results of static stress relaxation, where each relaxation curve obeys the analogous power law G' proportional, variant t(-a) in the corresponding region of long times and temperatures.     

Dynamics of Polymeric Fluids 1. The Molecular Theory of Die Swell： A Set of Equation on Swelling Ratio in Extrudates

The structural model of the multiple-transient networks and the mechanism of the multiple-reptation entangled chains due to the dynamic reorganization in the entangled sites were extensively applied on the die swell of polymeric liquids in the steady simple shear flow. The total (recoverable and unrecoverable) viscoelastic free energy of deformation and flow, the constitutive equation and the expression of the simple shear (tanψ)were deduced from the conformational probability distribution function of the entangled polymer chains. It found that: (1) the magnitudes of simple shear (tanψ) depended not only on the free recoil (or recoverable strain) but also on the viscous heating (or unrecoverable strain); (2) the total recoil may be resolved into the instantaneous and delayed recoil. Based on these facts, the functions of the partition and two experiential fractions of the recoverable (1(-W)γ) and the unrecoverable ((-W)γ) conformations for the recoil and viscous heating of polymeric liquids were defined correspondingly. Then the correlation of the instantaneously and ultimately (or total) recoverable strains to the (N1/τ12)w and the fraction of trans-form conformation was obtained. After introducing the condition of uniform two-dimensional extension (αx=αy=α, αz=α-2) and the swell ratio (B=α), two sets of equations on the instantaneous and ultimate swelling ratios (BE, BEVT) were obtained, and a method to determine the fraction of the recoverable transform conformation were proposed.The equations of BE and BE5 were verified by the experimental data of HDPE (high denisity polyethylene)at two different high temperatures. It shows that the molecular theory of die swell can be used to predict the correlation of the swelling to the (N1/τ12)w and the fraction of trans-form conformation.     

Thermally activated electrostatic injection of solvated ions by a track membrane interfaced vacuum feedthrough

Electromembrane ion sources are considered as potential techniques for direct mass spectrometric sampling from ambient conditions. Interfacing of a time-of-flight mass spectrometer by means of a poly(ethylene terephthalate) track membrane requires investigation of the thermally activated processes involved. In this study, we directly attempt substantiating an activation-like performance of such track membrane-mediated interfaces. A number of KCl/glycerol solution samples were tested. A wide range of fixed, externally applied, potential drops was covered. For the charge extraction processes studied, we observe and discuss an activation term, exp(-ΔF/k(B)T), with a free-energy barrier ΔF = ΔF(0) - ΔF(Φ). The potential drop-dependent ΔF(Φ), was found to be sensitive to the varying salt concentration.     

A 0-phase circuit for QCM-based measurements in highly viscous liquid environments

Currently, the series resonant frequency f/sub s/ and the motional resistance Rm of liquid loaded quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) sensors are extracted either directly, through network analyzer (NWA) impedance measurements, or from QCM-stabilized oscillator circuits. Both methods have serious drawbacks that may affect measurement accuracy, especially if the sensor is operated under highly viscous load conditions and Rm exceeds 1 k/spl Omega/. This paper presents a simple passive low-loss impedance transformation LC network which greatly reduces additional electrical loading of the QCM by the measurement system or sensor electronics and maintains a symmetric resonance and a steep 0-phase crossing at f/sub s/, even if Rm increases by several orders of magnitude as a result of liquid loading. A simple S21 transmission measurement allows direct f/sub s/ reading at the 0-phase frequency, while Rm is obtained from the circuit loss at f/sub s/. Circuit operation was verified at 9 MHz by QCM measurements in a liquid with known density and viscosity. The agreement between predicted and experimental data, which was obtained by a temperature-controlled measurement, was within 1%, even in very high viscosity ranges in which Rm exceeds 10 k/spl Omega/.     

Effect of rapeseed oil on the rheological,mechanical and thermal properties of plastic lubricants

A strong difference in the physico-chemical properties of the plastic lubricants studied was found in this study through pressure drop, thermal analysis, vibration damping, texture hardness and rheological measurements. Oxidation aging of the lubricant sample containing rapeseed oil additive was proposed. Its higher thermal sensitivity was simultaneously confirmed by frequency dependent complex shear modulus of elasticity measurements as well as by rheological testing. Rapeseed oil modified lubricant showed a higher decrease in both storage and moduli losses due to a temperature increase from 16 to 26 ° C compared to the rapeseed oil free sample. Simultaneously, the flow curves were shifted to the higher shear stresses (for plastic lubricant without rapeseed oil additive) typical for rheopectic fluids. For the rapeseed oil modified lubricant, the flow curves were shifted to the lower shear stresses, indicating its thixotropic fluid behaviour. The synthetic lubricant without rapeseed oil additive exhibited higher dissipative rheological behaviour as reflected by decreasing first resonance frequency peak position compared to the rapeseed oil modified lubricant as obtained from vibration damping measurements. It was found that the synthetic lubricant exhibited better vibration damping properties and mechanical energy dissipation into heat due to its higher viscous friction than the rapeseed oil modified lubricant under experimental conditions.

     

Ink‐on‐Probe Hydrodynamics in Atomic Force Microscope Deposition of Liquid Inks

The controlled deposition of attolitre volumes of liquids may engender novel applications such as soft, nano‐tailored cell‐material interfaces, multi‐plexed nano‐arrays for high throughput screening of biomolecular interactions, and localized delivery of reagents to reactions confined at the nano‐scale. Although the deposition of small organic molecules from an AFM tip, known as dip‐pen nanolithography (DPN), is being continually refined, AFM deposition of liquid inks is not well understood, and is often fraught with inconsistent deposition rates. In this work, the variation in feature‐size over long term printing experiments for four model inks of varying viscosity is examined. A hierarchy of recurring phenomena is uncovered and there are attributed to ink movement and reorganisation along the cantilever itself. Simple analytical approaches to model these effects, as well as a method to gauge the degree of ink loading using the cantilever resonance frequency, are described. In light of the conclusions, the various parameters which need to be controlled in order to achieve uniform printing are dicussed. This work has implications for the nanopatterning of viscous liquids and hydrogels, encompassing ink development, the design of probes and printing protocols.     

Isolated electrodeless high-frequency quartz crystal microbalance for immunosensors

This paper presents a contactless technique to measure shear bulk wave resonance frequencies of an isolated quartz crystal in a flow cell. The line antenna placed outside the cell generates and detects the resonance frequencies in a wireless-electrodeless manner. It is revealed that this mechanism relies on the quasistatic electric field. A 0.3-mm-thick AT-cut quartz was used, and its overtone resonance frequencies up to 80 MHz were measured in liquids. Exact vibrational analysis was carried out for a triple-layered resonator system consisting of the adsorbed material layer, the electrode film, and the quartz plate. It predicts higher frequency sensitivity to the adsorbed material at higher modes when the electrode layer is removed. The 13th overtone (72-MHz resonance frequency) was used to detect human immunoglobulin G with concentrations between 0.1 and 20 microg/mL captured by protein A immobilized on one side of the crystal. The real-time measurement of the frequency response yielded the equilibrium constant KA=5.21 x 10(7) M(-1).     

An acoustic study of the relaxation properties of ZhK-1282 nematic liquid crystals in the vicinity of the nematic-isotropic phase transition

The viscous and elastic properties of a ZhK-1282 nematic liquid crystal (NLC) were studied in a temperature interval from 290 to 360 K by method of ultrasonic spectroscopy in the 3–63 MHz frequency range. The temperature dependences of the NLC density and shear viscosity are presented. The results of measurements of the velocity and attenuation of ultrasound and the shear viscosity were used to calculate the volume viscosity coefficient, the moduli of dilatation and isothermal compressibility, the relaxation times of the elastic and viscous properties, and the corresponding critical characteristics of the given NLC.     

Rheology of polyaniline-dinonylnaphthalene disulfonic acid (DNNDSA) montmorillonite clay nanocomposites in the sol state: shear thinning versus pseudo-solid behavior

The melt rheology of polyaniline (PANI)-dinonylnaphthalenedisulfonic acid (DNNDSA) gel nanocomposites (GNCs) with organically modified (modified with cetyl trimethylammonium bromide)-montmorillonite (om-MMT) clay has been studied for three different clay concentrations at the temperature range 120-160 degrees C. Field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), wide angle X-ray scattering (WAXS), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and dc-conductivity data (approximately 10(-3) S/cm) indicate that the PANI-DNNDSA melt is in sol state and it is not de-doped at that condition. The WAXS data indicate that in GNC-1 sol clay tactoids are in exfoliated state but in the other sols they are in intercalated state. The zero shear viscosity (eta0), storage modulus (G') and loss modulus (G") increase than that of pure gel in the GNCs. The pure sol and the sols of gel nanocomposites (GNCs) exhibit Newtonian behavior for low shear rate (< 6 x 10(-3) s(-1)) and power law variation for the higher shear rate region. The characteristic time (A) increase with increasing clay concentration and the power law index (n) decreases with increase in clay concentration in the GNCs indicating increased shear thinning for the clay addition. Thus the sols of om-clay nanocomposites of PANI-DNNDSA system are easily processible. The storage modulus (G') of GNC sols are higher than that of pure PANI-DNNDSA sol, GNC1 sol shows a maximum of 733% increase in storage modulus and the percent increase decreases with increase in temperature. Exfoliated nature of clay tactoids has been attributed for the above dramatic increase of G'. The PANI-DNNDSA sol nanocomposites behave as a pseudo-solid at higher frequency where G' and loss modulus (G") show a crossover point in the frequency sweep experiment at a fixed temperature. The crossover frequency decreases with increase in clay concentration and it increases with increase in temperature for GNC sols. The pseudo-solid behavior has been explained from jamming or network formation of clay tactoids under shear. A probable explanation of the two apparently contradictory phenomena of shear thinning versus pseudo-solid behavior of the nanocomposite sols is discussed.     

Thermoelastic Model for Impulsive Stimulated Scattering Monitoring the Evolution from Capillary to Rayleigh Type Wave Propagation on the Surface of Viscoelastic Materials Throughout the Glass Transition

In recent decades, the impulsive stimulated scattering (ISS) method, which is based on photothermal and photoacoustic phenomena, has been successfully used to simultaneously investigate the thermal and elastic properties in a four-wave mixing configuration, both in transmission in semitransparent materials and on reflecting surfaces of solids. In this report, an extension of the technique is proposed to study a laser-induced thermoelastic response at the free surface of glass-forming liquids. The employed all-optical configuration allows extraction of information about the acoustic shear modulus in the MHz frequency range, and hence is complementary to the classical ISS configuration in the transmission mode, which is suitable to study the relaxation of the longitudinal acoustic modulus, and to another earlier reported ISS configuration, which is exciting and probing laser-induced thermoelastic phenomena at a liquid?Csolid interface. A theoretical model is presented and numerically illustrated for the glass transition of glycerol, and experimentally validated for water at room temperature.     

Phase-dependent dual-frequency contrast imaging at sub-harmonic frequency

Sub-harmonic imaging techniques have been shown to provide a higher contrast-to-tissue ratio (CTR) at the cost of relatively low signal intensity from ultrasound contrast agents (UCAs). In this study, we propose a method of dual-frequency excitation to further enhance the CTR of subharmonic imaging. A dual-frequency excitation pulse is an amplitude-modulated waveform which consists of two sinusoids with frequencies of f? (e.g., 9 MHz) and f? (e.g., 6 MHz) and the resulting envelope component at (f? - f?) (e.g., 3 MHz) can serve as a driving force to excite the nonlinear response of UCAs. In this study, the f?, at twice of the resonance frequency of UCAs, is adopted to efficiently generate a sub-harmonic component at half of the f? frequency, and f? is included to enhance the high-order nonlinear response of UCAs at the sub-harmonic frequency. The second- and third-order nonlinear components resulting from the envelope component would spectrally overlap at the sub-harmonic frequency when f? and f? are properly selected. We further optimize the generation of the sub-harmonic component by tuning the phase terms between second- and third-order nonlinear components. The results show that, with dual-frequency excitation, the CTR at sub-harmonic frequency improves compared with the conventional tone-burst method. Moreover, the CTR changes periodically with the relative phase of the separate frequency component in the dual-frequency excitation, leading to a difference of as much as 9.1 dB between the maximal and minimal CTR at 300 kPa acoustic pressure. The echo produced from the envelope component appears to be specific for UCAs, and thus the proposed method has the potential to improve both SNR and CTR in sub-harmonic imaging. Nevertheless, the dual-frequency waveform may suffer from frequency-dependent attenuation that degrades the generation of the envelope component. The deviation of the microbubble's resonance characteristics from the selection of dual-frequency transmission may also decrease the CTR improvement.     

Using the G' Raman cross-section to understand the phonon dynamics in bilayer graphene systems

The G' (or 2D) Raman band of AB stacked bilayer graphene comes from a double resonance Raman (DRR) process and is composed of four peaks (P(11), P(12), P(21), and P(22)). In this work, the integrated areas (IA) of these four peaks are analyzed as a function of the laser power for different laser lines. We show that the dependence of the IA of each peak on temperature is different for each distinct laser excitation energy. This special dependence is explained in terms of the electron-phonon coupling and the relaxation of the photon-excited electron. In this DRR process, the electron is scattered by an iTO phonon from a K to an inequivalent K' point of the Brillouin zone. Here, we show that this electron relaxes while in the conduction band before being scattered by an iTO phonon due to the short relaxation time of the excited electron, and the carrier relaxation occurs predominantly by emitting a low-energy acoustic phonon. The different combinations of relaxation processes determine the relative intensities of the four peaks that give rise to the G' band. Some peaks show an increase of their IA at the expense of others, thereby making the IA of the peaks both different from each other and dependent on laser excitation energy and on power level. Also, we report that the IA of the G' mode excited at 532 nm, shows a resonance regime involving ZO' phonons (related to the interlayer breathing mode in bilayer graphene systems) in which a saturation of what we call the P(12) process occurs. This effect gives important information about the electron and phonon dynamics and needs to be taken into account for certain applications of bilayer graphene in the field of nanotechnology.