This award provides funds to support the attendance of United States participants at the Second International Conference on Ultrasonic Biomedical Microscanning (UBM); the conference will be held at Windermere House, Lake Rosseau, Canada, September 5-8, 2000. The technical program builds on the results of the First International Conference on Ultrasonic Biomedical Microscanning, Eastwood Park, UK, September 1-4, 1998. The National Science Foundation (NSF) provided travel support to that meeting for six U. S. participants of the approximately 50 attendees from the U.S., Europe, and Asia.
Ultrasonic microscanning is a recent, rapidly emerging field with significant potential for medical visualization and fundamental biological and physical studies. UBM employs new ultrasonic transducers whose high center frequencies (above 20 MHz) and concomitant large bandwidths provide highly-detailed visualization of, e.g., 5-mm depths in superficial organs, tissues accessed via catheters, or unstained microscopic specimens. As an example, 50-MHz transducers are being used to examine the human eye with a resolution finer than 0.04 mm; acoustic microscopes using frequencies higher than 500 MHz have produced resolution superior to optical microscopes -- without the need for staining.
The conference will serve as a stimulus to promoting productive research and development directions for this new field. The objectives of the conference are: to provide a forum to assess the current state-of-the-art in UBM technologies and applications; to foster communication among experts in diverse multi-disciplinary UBM fields; to identify key problems needing solution for practical deployment; and, to share insights into future directions with experts in UBM and allied non-ultrasound methodologies. An Executive Summary of the proceedings of the conference will be submitted to NSF.
