Ossia, the RF wireless charging company, have received Part 18 approval from the FCC. The system needs a fixed transmitter and receiver, a receiver the size of 2 phones, barely receives a Watt, no-one can be within 20 centimeters of either, and is at the safety limit for power output. Their own publicity seems to downplay the system and instead focuses on unavailable mythical future products. Where do they go from here?
The basics of imaging require a certain number of elements. The acoustic window must be a certain size for the application, the elements must be smaller than a wavelength to avoid grating lobes (0.5 wavelength for perfect phased arrays in that regard). Divide one into the other, and you get a number of elements that's usually between 100 and 200.
On what basis do you make your statement that this is too many elements? IMO implies opinion, do you have any facts or physics to back up your statement?
>> do you have any facts or physics to back up your statement?
I do not think that beamforming needs more than a few emitting sources neither a Nobel prize. Check no further than your Wi-Fi router's antennas.
The technology you are describing is entirely different and older, as in your description there is no beamforming.
In the technology you describe, there is a requirement for two emitters/receivers to be separated by less than a wavelength, however this strong requirement does not exist for beamforming.
What makes beamforming useful is modulating and coding the beam. Another thing important is the SNR, as it is the addition of the waves that creates "beams".
When I checked Google patents I found beamforming patents in ultrasound imaging since 1986, and super-resolution (pionnered in astronomy and microscopy) in ultrasound imaging since 2005 (US 20050160817).
I do appreciate being called a "condescending asshat", I might get a t-shirt with that on it, thanks.
I though my credentials were one paragraph instead of many, but maybe I need to count again.
As for lording it over you with qualifications - I just needed to make it clear that I actually do have a huge amount of experience in this area, otherwise instead of being a "condescending asshat" people would be asking who the hell do I think I am commentating on this.
I make no apology for knowing what I'm talking about, there's too many articles written by people with no idea about the topic.
And don't take it personally, I've something of a reputation in ultrasound for being blunt.
Quick answer - yes, GPUs are now reaching the point that they are becoming useful, but also imaging techniques such as superresolution methods, ultra fast imaging, and others, demand even more computation. I expect to see advancements in the next few years because of this, and at some point (maybe 10+ years from now), that GPU power will exceed the demand from ultrasound and even the highest end systems can use them for all needs. This is not lost on the community and they are working on exactly that kind of research.
Original post author here, thanks for your comments.
There is a robust second hand market for ultrasound systems and probes, just google for those companies or search on eBay.
There are also research platforms out there for imaging from various universities, some of which are open source. They aren't nearly as good as the commercial codes, but a few grad students can't compete against teams of full time professionals working for decades. Commercial codes are unlikely to be open sourced. Many are tied to the architecture of the systems, and most are reused in later systems and so are still useful decades later. It's highly unlikely that any company would open source them, it's just not how they operate.
As for explosions of technology and advances - yes, I do expect more advanced electronics and signal processing to have a large impact on ultrasound in the coming years, but it is more complex than most in this thread give credit for, and will take time to appear.
Because there are multiple competitors in the field, and you are a new entry. In order to be accepted as an unknown in a quality and results conscious market, you either have to be way better, way cheaper, or some combination of those.
If you are an established player, then you can sell for slightly less and get market share from your competitor. But in a competitive market, he is also smart and makes the system cheaper, then undercuts you, and on it goes until price reaches equilibrium at a much lower price point.
If you are in a monopoly position, then you can extract a premium profit until either the govt stops you with anti-trust, or a competitor appears who wants some of that profit. If you listen to everyone on this thread, ultrasound systems are easy to make so jump right in!
Ultrasound is an incredibly competitive market with multiple large players, each of whom has high quality technical teams and they compete for market share.
A 2 cent PZT buzzer is ridiculously far from an ultrasound probe, engineering wise, and your units are off by about three orders of magnitude. And soldering depoles PZT.
A transducer does not cost as much as a car (well, not a well made car), but a system does. That's the cart plus a number of transducers.
Yes, I only covered the transducer in that post, but as I noted, the systems and software deserve their own Pt II. It takes time to write this kind of stuff you know?
Your other points I try to answer in my updated blog post along with many others here in this thread.
What units? Thickness mode resonant frequency? The cost? injection molding precision? The 100 micron thing? I have a PZT buzzer on my desk that I measured the thickness resonance, which is 5 cents in units of 10k. Injection molding accuracy is around a thou, but the precision and surface finish is impeccable. I also have on my desk parts with 0402 resistors- 500 microns wide, 350 microns tall. I soldered them by hand without magnification. 38 AWG wire is 100 microns wide. 100 microns is wide enough to drive a truck through.
Soldering with silver-lead depoles PZT. Bismuth solder does not and regardless repoling PZT is trivial- a couple hundred volts at most, and temperatures below the melting point of plastics.
The transducer is the only part of the system that should concievably be expensive, though. Doctors don't use special, medical-company made laptops- they use thinkpads or dell or whatever. The cart is unnecessary! It shouldn't be where the cost is coming from. The cart should add a few thousand dollars. The electronics have no business costing tens of thousands of dollars. The R&D, the software, and the transducers are the only plausible money sinks. If making a monitor is expensive, the companies should buy a cheap laptop and write an application to run on it.
I do really enjoy your posts but I am firmly in the camp that the price of ultrasound machines is an order of magnitude too high. I also think it needs to come down ASAP and that the future of cancer treatment really depends on regular ultrasound screenings and machine learning.
