Passive Sonar for Cavitation Detection in the Brain
Abstract
Passive sonar for cavitation detection in the brainThe Navy is familiar with cavitation. It is one of the major causes of the progressive breakdown of ships~ propellers, and the sound emitted when cavitation bubbles burst can give away the submarine~s location. Similarly, microbubble collapse in brain tissue also emits sound, which can be detected by passive listening to the sound emissions with sensitive ultrasound sensors. We propose to develop passive sonar for the brain (PSB) that can robustly detect the presence of cavitation in the brain and provide an estimation of cavitation location and strength. The underlying concept is to use a minimum of four passive cavitation detectors to localize cavitation in 3D and quantify the acoustic emissions strength. PSB has two unique advantages for transcranial cavitation detection: (1) For active pulse-echo detection method, an ultrasound pulse needs to pass through the skull twice; For PSB, the acoustic emissions from cavitation bubbles only pass once through the skull, which significantly decreases skull attenuation, scattering, and absorbtion; (2) PSB can achieve real-time capturing of cavitation activity occurring at a microsecond timescale; (3) PSB uses only a few sensors (e.g., four sensors), which makes it possible to develop wearable PSB for future translation to human use.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- May 23, 2019
- Source ID
- N000141912335
Entities
People
- Hong Chen
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy
- Washington University in St. Louis