Ultrasound waves, widely used as a non-invasive diagnostic modality, were recently shown to stimulate neuronal activity. Functionally meaningful stimulation, as is required in order to form a unified percept, requires the dynamic generation of simultaneous stimulation patterns. In this paper, we examine the general feasibility and properties of an acoustic retinal prosthesis, a new vision resto...

In future domestic context aware applications the location of mobile devices is often required. Ultrasound technology enables high resolution indoor position measurements. A disadvantage of state-of-the-art ultrasonic systems is that several base stations are required to estimate 3D position. Since fewer base stations would lead to lower cost and easier setup, a novel method is presented that r...

In this study, diamond turning of an aluminiumbased metal matrix composite (MMC) reinforced with SiC particles was conducted with the assistance of ultrasonic vibrations. A simple and small size vibration device was designed to mount a piezoelectric transducer and a diamond insert onto a CNC machine. Turning experiments were carried out using a factorial design to investigate the effects of vib...

The use of PSpice models for piezoelectric devices and ultrasonic transmission media is of major importance when designing electronics for ultrasonic systems. Today, these models include viscoelastic loss but disregard loss due to diffraction, i.e. beam spreading. This paper presents a method for the inclusion of diffraction loss in PSpice simulations of ultrasonic systems. The conductive loss ...

An implementation system of three-dimensional endoscopic photoacoustic imaging is presented. The developed endoscopic photoacoustic detector integrates a multielement linear transducer array, a reflective device, a Plexiglass tube, and ultrasonic coupling medium. To match with the acoustic impendence of Plexiglass tube, a glycerin solution with 45% volume percentage was used as the ultrasonic c...

The design and development of bio-inspired ultrasonic systems particularly that of some species of bats, has received the most attention due to the potential benefit of application in the field of biomedical engineering and robotics. In this paper an ultrasonic based device for the emulation of bat’s echo-location system, by means of piezo-polymer sensors and a neural network, capable to perfor...

A method is described for comparing the sensitivity of two hydrophones over the frequency range 1-15 MHz. This technique forms the basis for the dissemination of national ultrasonic standards in the U.K. over this frequency range. A reference hydrophone is placed in an ultrasonic field and then the device being calibrated is substituted and the two output voltages are compared. This substitutio...

BACKGROUND Because gastrointestinal cancers are generally firm, the presence and extent of a tumor can be assessed by touch during surgery. However, an objective scale for evaluating tissue hardness does not exist. We developed a new instrument, the endoscopic ultrasonic tactile sensor, that allows objective evaluation of hardness. In this study the usefulness of this device for diagnosis of th...

Development of an ultrasonic device to image the hardness of tissues is important for a cancer diagnosis. Conventional methods cannot precisely measure the size of object, because the sound speed of an object is unknown. We propose a fuzzy inference system for ultrasonic imaging based on the velocity of materials. This method consists of three stages. In the first stage, the surface of the obje...