A Help for Medicine are Sound Waves in 3D

If we weren’t sure by now about the impressive advancement that science could reach, we have the chance to read about another discovery: sound waves in 3D. But that is not all of it. Scientists have recently discovered that the structuring of sound waves in 3D could be a revolutionary help for the world of medicine. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and the University of Stuttgart have presented a way of producing acoustic holograms, which will be able to boost ultrasound diagnostics. These holograms have yet another use. Their purpose is also to manipulate particles.

Peer Fischer, a Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and Professor at the University of Stuttgart, works along with his team on developing nanofabrication methods.  Their purpose was to move a huge number of microparticles all at once so that they could put them together into even larger structures.  A similar method, but this time with acoustic holography, was recently discovered by his team of scientists. The first acoustic hologram will be soon published in Nature magazine.

We all know that holograms in optics are bound to offer a way to turn photography into 3D. Holography, unlike photos taken with a traditional camera, seizes the information where the reflected light achieves its utmost vividness. Based on the reflection from a 3D object, the phase of the wave switches and renders information about the spatial construction of the object. This way, holograms receive 3D appearance. This is called sound wave in 3D.

A phased array transducer was claimed by the physicists to be the only possible way to manipulate the 3D structure of acoustic waves. Kay Melde, the conductor of the experiments at the Max Planck Institue for Intelligent Systems, argues that it is now possible to generate sound waves in 3D without using sophisticated technology.

Scientists proved us by using Picasso’s painting “Dove of peace” which was transposed by scientists into sound. Men of science first attested a hologram which produces sound pressure in the shape of Picasso’s painting. The image is made with the help of microparticles suspended in a liquid. Before this, Melde’s team first introduced the information in a computer highlighting where and how the intensity of the acoustic wave should be modified. It required shifting to translate the image of the dove into an area where the sound pressure was highly increased.

Science keeps progressing day by day, a branch of science always helping the other to grow. Do you think this could be useful for medicine, in ultrasound fields’ experiments?

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