Articles 2008

Résumé: Time-reversal mirrors (TRMs) refocus an incident acoustic field to the position of the original source regardless of the complexity of the propagation medium. TRM's have now been implemented in a variety of physical scenarios from MHz ultrasonics with order centimeter aperture size to hundreds/thousands of Hz in ocean acoustics with order hundred meter aperture size. Common to this broad range of scales is a remarkable robustness exemplified by observations at all scales that the more complex the medium between the probe source and the TRM, the sharper the focus. The relation between the medium complexity and the size of the focal spot is studied in this paper. It is certainly the most exciting property of TRM compared to standard focusing devices. A TRM acts as an antenna that uses complex environments to appears wider than it is, resulting for a broadband pulse in a refocusing quality that does not depend of the TRM aperture. In this paper, we investigate the time-reversal approach in various media of increasing complexity We will also demonstrated that time-reversal focusing opens completely new approaches to super-resolution. We will show that in medium made of random distribution of sub-wavelength scatterers, a time-reversed wave field interacts with the random medium to regenerate not only the propagating but also the evanescent waves required to refocus below the diffraction limit. Finally, we will discuss the link existing between time-reversal approaches and new imaging methods recently developed where Green's functions of complex media can be extracted from diffusive noise by cross-correlating the recordings of a diffuse random wave field. © 2008 IOP Publishing Ltd.

Résumé: This paper presents a new algorithm for conductivity imaging. Our idea is to extract more information about the conductivity distribution from data that have been enriched by coupling impedance electrical measurements to localized elastic perturbations. Using asymptotics of the fields in the presence of small volume inclusions, we relate the pointwise values of the energy density to the measured data through a nonlinear PDE. Our algorithm is based on this PDE and takes full advantage of the enriched data. We give numerical examples that illustrate the performance and the accuracy of our approach. © 2008 Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.

Résumé: We introduce a methodology to determine quantitatively the depth resolution limit in luminescence diffuse optical imaging. The approach is based on a Cramer-Rao statistical analysis, a noise model, and calculations of photon transport in tissues. We illustrate the method in the case of luminescence imaging in a brain-skull model, showing its potential applications in molecular imaging on small animals. © 2008 Optical Society of America.

Résumé: Pulse-inversion (PI) sequences are sensitive to the nonlinear echoes from microbubbles allowing an improvement in the blood-to-tissue contrast. However, at larger mechanical indices, this contrast is reduced by harmonics produced during nonlinear propagation. A method for tissue harmonics cancellation exploiting time reversal is experimentally implemented using a 128-channel 12-bit emitter receiver. The probe calibration is performed by acquiring the nonlinear echo of a wire in water. These distorted pulses are time-reversed, optimized and used for the PI imaging of a tissue phantom. Compared to normal (straight) pulses, the time-reversed distorted pulses reduced the tissue signal in PI by 11 dB. The second harmonic signals from microbubbles flowing in a wall-less vessel were unaffected by the correction. This technique can thus increase the blood-to-tissue contrast ratio while keeping the pressure and the number of pulses constant. © 2008 Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine.

Résumé: In wurtzite-based quantum wells and superlattices with the c axis parallel to the layer plane, this plane is parallel either to a symmetry plane of the wurtzite lattice (type I structures, the 〈11 2- 0〉growth direction) or to a glide plane containing the c axis (type II structures, the 〈10 1- 0〉 growth direction). In both cases, the space symmetry of the structure depends on the parity of the number of monolayers within the slab(s). The point symmetry is C 2vexcept for the type II structures with odd monolayer number(s). The latter structures have the σ vpoint symmetry and can have a built-in electric field. Quite different selection rules, depending on the structure symmetry, govern electron optical transitions and exciton radiative recombination. © 2008 Pleiades Publishing, Ltd.

Résumé: In isotropic quasi-incompressible media, an expression of the elastic energy density has been developed as a function of the second-, third-, and fourth-order elastic constants (respectively μ, A, D). Thus the shear nonlinearity parameter ΒS depends only on these coefficients. In this letter ΒS is measured using finite amplitude plane shear waves in agar-gelatin based phantoms. Combining the results with recently published measurements of μ and A on the same phantoms, the fourth-order shear elastic constant D is found to be of the order of 10 kPa and thus of the same order of magnitude as μ and A. © 2008 American Institute of Physics.

Résumé: Abtract. This paper presents an initial clinical evaluation of in vivo elastography for breast lesion imaging using the concept of supersonic shear imaging. This technique is based on the combination of a radiation force induced in tissue by an ultrasonic beam and an ultrafast imaging sequence capable of catching in real time the propagation of the resulting shear waves. The local shear wave velocity is recovered using a time-offlight technique and enables the 2-D mapping of shear elasticity. This imaging modality is implemented on a conventional linear probe driven by a dedicated ultrafast echographic device. Consequently, it can be performed during a standard echographic examination. The clinical investigation was performed on 15 patients, which corresponded to 15 lesions (4 cases BI-RADS 3, 7 cases BI-RADS 4 and 4 cases BI-RADS 5). The ability of the supersonic shear imaging technique to provide a quantitative and local estimation of the shear modulus of abnormalities with a millimetric resolution is illustrated on several malignant (invasive ductal and lobular carcinoma) and benign cases (fibrocystic changes and viscous cysts). In the investigated cases, malignant lesions were found to be significantly different from benign solid lesions with respect to their elasticity values. Cystic lesions have shown no shear wave propagate at all in the lesion (because shear waves do not propage in liquid). These preliminary clinical results directly demonstrate the clinical feasibility of this new elastography technique in providing quantitative assessment of relative stiffness of breast tissues. This technique of evaluating tissue elasticity gives valuable information that is complementary to the B-mode morphologic information. More extensive studies are necessary to validate the assumption that this new mode potentially helps the physician in both false-positive and false-negative rejection. (E-mail: ). © 2008 World Federation for Ultrasound in Medicine & Biology.

Résumé: In a recent paper inspected the effective parameters of a cluster containing an ensemble of scatterers with a periodic or a weakly disordered arrangement. A small amount of disorder is shown to have a small influence on the characteristics of the acoustic wave propagation with respect to the periodic case. In this Brief Report, we inspect further the effect of a deviation in the scatterer distribution from the periodic distribution. The quasicrystalline approximation is shown to be an efficient tool to quantify this effect. An analytical formula for the effective wave number is obtained in one-dimensional acoustic medium and is compared with the Berryman result in the low-frequency limit. Direct numerical calculations show a good agreement with the analytical predictions. © 2008 The American Physical Society.

Résumé: In this paper, we present a simple method to find networks of time-correlated brain sources, using a singular value decomposition (SVD) analysis of the source matrix estimated after any linear distributed inverse problem in magnetoencephalography (MEG) and electroencephalography (EEG). Despite the high dimension of the source space, our method allows for the rapid computation of the source matrix. In order to do this, we use the linear relationship between sensors and sources, and show that the SVD can be calculated through a simple and fast computation. We show that this method allows the estimation of one or several global networks of correlated sources without calculating a coupling coefficient between all pairs of sources. A series of simulations studies were performed to estimate the efficiency of the method. In order to illustrate the validity of this approach in experimental conditions, we used real MEG data from a visual stimulation task on one test subject and estimated, in different time windows of interest, functional networks of correlated sources. © 2006 IEEE.

Résumé: Elastic plates or cylinders can support guided modes with zero group velocity (ZGV) at a nonzero value of the wave number. Using laser-based ultrasonic techniques, we experimentally investigate some fascinating properties of these ZGV modes: resonance and ringing effects, backward wave propagation, interference between backward and forward modes. Then, the conditions required for the existence of ZGV Lamb modes in isotropic plates are discussed. It is shown that these modes appear in a range of Poisson's ratio about the value for which the cutoff frequency curves of modes belonging to the same family intercept, i.e., for a bulk wave velocity ratio equal to a rational number. An interpretation of this phenomenon in terms of a strong repulsion between a pair of modes having a different parity in the vicinity of the cutoff frequencies is given. Experiments performed with materials of various Poisson's ratio demonstrate that the resonance spectrum of an unloaded elastic plate, locally excited by a laser pulse, is dominated by the ZGV Lamb modes. © 2008 Acoustical Society of America.

Résumé: We experimentally study the effects of correlations in the propagation of ultrasonic waves in water from a multielement source to a multielement detector through a strongly scattering system of randomly placed vertical rods. Due to the strong scattering, the wave transport in the sample is in the diffusive regime. The correlation between the waves is induced when the distance between transducer elements is within the coherence region of the scattered sound. We measure the multichannel transfer matrix H, each element of which represents the signal strength between the m individual transmitters and n receivers. The observed eigenvalue distribution of the matrix H H† clearly shows the effect of correlations between channels and can be interpreted using random matrix theory. These results are of practical importance in many areas, e.g., for evaluating the information transfer capacity of such a complex scattering system. © 2008 The American Physical Society.

Résumé: In this graduate-level theoretical paper, we propose a general derivation of the adiabatic invariant of the n-degree-of-freedom harmonic oscillator, available whichever the physical nature of the oscillator and of the parametrical excitation it undergoes. This derivation is founded on the use of the classical Glauber variables and ends up with this simplest result: the oscillator's adiabatic invariant is just the sum of all the semiclassical quanta numbers associated with its different eigenmodes. © 2008 IOP Publishing Ltd.

Résumé: Ex vivo experiments have been conducted through excised pork rib with bone, cartilage, muscle and skin. The aberrating effect of the ribcage has been experimentally evaluated. Adaptive ultrasonic focusing through ribs has been studied at low power. Without any correction, the pressure fields in the focal plane were both affected by inhomogeneous attenuation and phase distortion and three main effects were observed: a mean 2 mm shift of the main lobe, a mean 1.25 mm spreading of the half width of the main lobe and up to 20 dB increase of the secondary lobe level. Thanks to time-reversal focusing, a 5 dB decrease in the secondary lobes was obtained and the ratio between the energy deposited at the target location and the total amount of energy emitted by the therapeutic array was six times higher than that without correction. Time-reversal minimizes the heating of the ribs by automatically sonicating between the ribs, as demonstrated by temperature measurements using thermocouples placed at different locations on the ribcage. It is also discussed how this aberration correction process could be achieved non-invasively for clinical application. © 2008 Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine.

Résumé: We study the fluctuations of the fluorescence decay rate of a single emitter in a random cluster of nanoparticles, in a regime dominated by near-field scattering. Configurational changes of the environment induce statistical changes of the decay rate. Two regimes are considered which differ in terms of transition dipole orientation. In one regime, the orientation of the transition dipole is assumed to remain constant while the configuration of the cluster changes randomly. In another regime, the orientation of the transition dipole is assumed unknown and continuously averaged over the three directions of space. Using exact numerical simulations and a simple analytical model, we show that the statistical distributions of the spontaneous decay rate are substantially different in both regimes. In both cases, the decay rate fluctuations are strongly dependent on the level of absorption at the nanoscale. We discuss the impact of this result in terms of imaging in complex media. © 2008 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.

Résumé: We show that two types of wurtzite quantum dots can be grown with the C3v symmetry. Their symmetry axis coincides with a threefold proper rotation and a 63 improper rotation axis of the wurtzite lattice, respectively. One-, two-, and three-dimensional periodic structures made of such dots are considered. Most of them have the C3v point symmetry except some one- and three-dimensional structures that have the C6v one. The symmetry planes and possible glide planes for the dots and dot structures are those of the wurtzite matrix. It is shown that, under incident light propagating along the growth direction, the absorption is strong for valence-to-conduction-band transitions but, on the contrary, the absorption is weak in infrared detectors based on transitions within the conduction band. It makes it necessary to draw a grating to change the light direction within the device (as is also the case for infrared detectors based on wurtzite quantum wells or superlattices). © 2008 The American Physical Society.

Résumé: The Décomposition de l'Opérateur de Retournement Temporel method applies to scattering analysis with arrays of transducers. It comprises the study of the time-reversal invariants which correspond to the eigenvectors of the time-reversal operator or to the singular vectors of the array response matrix K. In this paper, the decomposition of the scattered pressure into normal modes of vibrations is used to determine the theoretical time-reversal invariants for a large elastic object such as a cylinder or sphere. For an N transducers one-dimensional array, the time-reversal operator is dimension N. It is shown that the dimension is reduced to 2k0a for a cylinder or a sphere, where a is the scatterer radius and k0 is the wave number in the surrounding fluid. Furthermore, this approach provides analytical expressions of symmetric and anti-symmetric singular values and vectors in the sub-resolution limit, i.e. when the scatterer diameter is smaller than the array resolution cell. These results are verified experimentally and in good agreement with the original point of view: for a small scatterer, one singular value dominates and the associated singular vector focuses isotropically on the scatterer. © 2008 IOP Publishing Ltd.

Résumé: Elastography has many exciting new areas of application in the domains of diagnosis and therapy. We present in this overview the current gold standard given by MR elastography, which uses a full three-dimensional approach to solve locally for the unknown complex shear modulus at one frequency. Clinical results for benign and malignant breast lesions are shown. Less rigorous in terms of data completeness, but significantly faster and easier to apply, we introduce the ultrasound-based supersonic shear imaging technique, which uses acoustic radiation force to generate inside the medium planar shear waves. Subsequent ultrafast imaging of the propagating shear wave allows one to recuperate detailed time-of-flight maps of in-vivo breast lesions. Lastly, we present initial results for using magnetic resonance imaging and acoustic radiation force together for high-intensity focused ultrasound interventions. © 2006 IEEE.

Résumé: In wurtzite-based quantum wells and superlattices with the c -axis parallel to the layer plane, the plane is parallel to either a symmetry plane of the wurtzite lattice (type I structures, the □ 11-20 □ growth direction) or a glide plane parallel to the c -axis (type II structures, the □ 10-10 □ growth direction). We show that, in both cases, the space symmetry of the structure depends on the parity of the number of monolayers within the slab(s). The point symmetry is C2v except for the type II structures with odd number(s) of monolayers. The latter structures have the σv point symmetry and can present a built-in electric field. Quite different selection rules, depending on the structure symmetry, govern electron optical transitions and exciton radiative recombination as well as first- and second-order infrared absorption. The intensities of the various dipolar, infrared, and Raman lines are discussed. The effect of applied magnetic and electric fields is presented. A simple optical test is proposed to distinguish the structures with the σv point symmetry and those with the C2v one. © 2008 The American Physical Society.

Résumé: The FDORT method (French acronym for decomposition of the time reversal operator using focused beams) is a time reversal based method that can detect point scatterers in a heterogeneous medium and extract their Green's function. It is particularly useful when focusing in a heterogeneous medium. This paper generalizes the theory of the FDORT method to random media (speckle), and shows that it is possible to extract Green's functions from the speckle signal using this method. Therefore it is possible to achieve a good focusing even if no point scatterers are present. Moreover, a link is made between FDORT and the Van Cittert-Zernike theorem. It is deduced from this interpretation that the normalized first eigenvalue of the focused time reversal operator is a well-known focusing criterion. The concept of an equivalent virtual object is introduced that allows the random problem to be replaced by an equivalent deterministic problem and leads to an intuitive understanding of FDORT in speckle. Applications to aberration correction are presented. The reduction of the variance of the Green's function estimate is discussed. Finally, it is shown that the method works well in the presence of strong interfering scatterers. © 2008 Acoustical Society of America.

Résumé: Thermal conductivity degradation of three semi-metallic ceramics: titanium carbide, zirconium carbide and titanium nitride, and a covalent compound: 6H silicon carbide, induced by irradiation with energetic heavy ions at room temperature, is studied and quantified. Irradiations by 25.8 MeV krypton ions at 10 16 and 6 × 10 16 ions cm -2 doses were used to produce defects in the considered materials. Modulated thermoreflectance microscopy measurements were performed to characterize the resulting subsurfasic degradation of the thermal conductivity for each of the investigated materials. The study considers the two collision domains produced by the inelastic collisions and the elastic collisions that occur during an ion irradiation. A significant thermal conductivity degradation in the two collision domains for all materials is obtained. Elastic collisions are shown to degrade the thermal properties more strongly than the inelastic ones. The scattering of thermal energy carriers is larger in the elastic collision domain because displacement cascades produce a very high concentration of point defects. The degradation coming from electronic interactions is found to be more important in SiC, which can be explained by the presence of large populations of generated extended defects, facing generated individual point defects in the studied semi-metallic materials. © 2008 IOP Publishing Ltd.

Résumé: The thermal conductivity degradation induced by irradiation with energetic heavy ions at room temperature is studied and quantified. Three semi-metallic systems: titanium and zirconium carbides, titanium nitride, as well as a covalent compound: 6H silicon carbide were irradiated by 25.8 MeV krypton ions at 10 16 and 6. 10 16 ions.cm -2 doses to produce defects. During ion irradiation, inelastic collisions and elastic collisions occur at a different depth in a material. Two collision domains can be defined. Modulated thermoreflectance microscopy measurements were performed at differing frequencies to characterize the thermal conductivity degradation in these two domains for each of the investigated materials. Our results reveal a significant thermal conductivity degradation in the two collision domains for all materials. Elastic collisions are shown to degrade more strongly the thermal properties than inelastic ones. Scattering of thermal energy carriers is larger in elastic collision domain because displacement cascades produce a very high concentration of point defects: vacancies, interstitials and implanted Kr ions. The degradation coming from electronic interactions that seems to be more important in SiC can be explained by the presence of large populations of generated extended defects, facing to generated individual point defects in TiC, TiN or ZrC. © EDP Sciences/Societé Italiana di Fisica/Springer-Verlag 2008.