Academic Contact: Steve Freear
Academic Staff: Dr Craig A. Evans, Dr David Cowell, Dr James McLaughlan, Professor Megan Povey, Professor Steven Freear

The group has an interdisciplinary culture and a broad research area combining the fields of Engineering, Physics, Medicine and Mathematics.

The group’s expertise encompasses the application of ultrasonics and embedded systems to a wide range of problems from biomedical imaging and therapy to industrial measurement and sensing. The main strength of the research team is the development of bespoke electronics and novel signal processing algorithms.

Team members currently work on the following projects:

• Shear wave elastography for breast imaging
• Application of adaptive beamforming techniques and deconvolution algorithms to the detection of small lesions
• Analysis of the complex 2D flow pattern of heart chambers using contrast agents and ultrafast imaging.
• Development of “Nano-Bombs” as a new personalised approach to cancer imaging and therapy
• Design of HiFU array systems
• An MRI-Safe 3DL intracardiac ultrasound catheter for cardiovascular intervention
• Photoacoustic effect for detection and photothermal effects for therapy
• Non-contact pipe localisation and condition assessment using large standoff magnetometry
• Beamforming techniques for transcranial dual mode use arrays
• Acoustic ‘trap’ – A novel method for simultaneously trapping, manipulating and imaging of microbubbles using an ultrasonic beam.
• Extremely high frame rate imaging

Research highlights include:

• A partner in the highly successful Leeds Microbubble Consortium. This partnership led to many prominent publications surrounding theranostic agents
• Development of a unique, high frame rate, Ultrasound Array Research Platform (UARP II)
• Ongoing deployment of UARP technology that enables the in-situ characterisation of nuclear waste during decommissioning
• An ultrasound excitation patent that facilitates arbitrary waveform generation in a scalable way for phased array transducers
• A successful collaboration with Speir Hunter developing and deploying large standoff magnetometry systems; which are now in use around the world

Full list of research areas here:

https://institutes.engineering.leeds.ac.uk/ultrasound/facilities.html

https://institutes.engineering.leeds.ac.uk/ultrasound/facilities_instrumentation.html