Tissue Doppler imaging (TDI) mode of echocardiography plays a crucial role in diagnosing several cardiac conditions by recording the myocardial contraction velocities. To mitigate the need of experts for performing echocardiography, several studies have proposed the use of Seismocardiogram as an easier alternative to measure the cardiac timings. However, exact correlation with tissue Doppler measured cardiac velocities has not been explored. Moreover, most of the applications only use single channel contact accelerometers on the chest, thus limiting their utility. In this work, we propose the use of a novel airborne ultrasound based surface motion camera (SMC) for non-contact multichannel recording of cardiac induced surface velocities from the chest. Validation study was conducted on 30 healthy subjects with simultaneous recordings of single channel ECG along with the chest surface velocities followed by clinical Echocardiography. The SMC recorded surface velocity waveforms show correlation similarity of over 0.6 with Tissue Doppler velocity waves extracted from the echocardiographic images. Discrete time warping based distance analysis was also performed to quantify their morphological similarity. Quantitative parameters including the peak systolic velocity and amplitude ratio extracted from the chest recordings show a linear correlation (R2greater than 0.8) with that of the TDI values. Additionally, multichannel recording allows visualization of the velocity profiles on the chest and efficiently captures the spatial variations for left ventricular and septal sites. Hence, this new modality shows the potential to be a vital diagnostic technique for non-contact and robust monitoring of the cardio-mechanical functions.

This research-to-practice paper shows how to visualize the conceptual framework of object-oriented programming. 'Classes' and 'objects' (from the solution domain) are respectively visualized as ‘phenomena’ and 'concepts' (from the problem domain), thereby visualizing the connection between code and reality. In the spirit of bringing research-to-practice, we implemented a prototype programming environment for Java called ‘SHowMyCODE’ based on this conceptual visualization. We report on a controlled experiment involving N=138 introductory programming (CS1) students. The experiment involves three tasks with progression (USE, Modify, and Create) and compares a treatment group with the reality-code visualization vs a control group without the visualization. The results show that, for Use tasks, students are faster (but not more accurate) when using the reality-code visualisation. In contrast, for Create tasks, learners are more accurate (but not faster) when using the reality visualisation. Finally, we report that students appear to value a visualization that shows the reality-code connection above a generic visualization without this connection.

The emerging concept of extremely-large holographic multiple-input multiple-output (HMIMO), beneficial from compactly and densely packed cost-efficient radiating metaatoms, has been demonstrated for enhanced degrees of freedom even in pure line-of-sight conditions, enabling tremendous multiplexing gain for the next-generation communication systems. Most of the reported works focus on energy and spectrum efficiency, path loss analyses, and channel modeling. The extension to secure communications remains unexplored. In this paper, we theoretically characterize the secrecy capacity of the HMIMO network with multiple legitimate users and one eavesdropper while taking into consideration artificial noise and max-min fairness. We formulate the power allocation (PA) problem and address it by following successive convex approximation and Taylor expansion. We further study the effect of fixed PA coefficients, imperfect channel state information, inter-element spacing, and the number of Eve's antennas on the sum secrecy rate. Simulation results show that significant performance gain with more than 100% increment in the high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regime for the two-user case is obtained by exploiting adaptive/flexible PA compared to the case with fixed PA coefficients.

Ultra-high data rates with low-power consumption wireless communications and low-complexity receivers is one of the key requirements for the next 6-th Generation (6G) of communication networks. Sub-Terahertz (SubTHz) frequency bands can support Ultra-WideBand (UWB) communications and can thus offer unprecedented increase in the wireless network capacity, rendering those bands and relevant research a strong candidate technology for 6G. However, in contrast to millimeter-wave communications, the technological advances in subTHz transceivers are not yet completely mature. In this paper, we focus on the Time Reversal (TR) precoding scheme, which is a computationally simple and robust technique capable of focusing UWB waveforms on both time and space, by exploiting channel diversity when available. We design a novel experimental setup, including a THz link inside a waveguide and operating at the carrier frequency 273.6 GHz with 2 GHz transmission bandwidth, and deploy it to perform multi-user communications with simple modulation. Our results demonstrate large communication rates with only 3 mm space separation of the receiving antennas.

Time Reversal (TR) has been proposed as a competitive precoding strategy for low-complexity wireless devices relying on Ultra-WideBand (UWB) signal waveforms. However, when TR is applied for multiple access, the signals received by the multiple users suffer from significant levels of inter-symbol and inter-user interference, which requires additional processing for mitigation by each receiving user. In this paper, we present an iterative Time-Reversal Division Multiple Access (TRDMA) approach that aims to dim the latter interference levels. The performance of iterative TRDMA is evaluated experimentally in a reverberation chamber that mimics a rich scattering indoor wireless propagation environment. The improved efficiency, in terms of the number of algorithmic iterations, of the proposed approach compared to conventional TRDMA, is demonstrated. We also consider a mobile user configuration, where the position of the receiver changes between the channel estimation and data transmission steps. It is showcased, even for this experimental setup, that the proposed iterative TRDMA approach is more efficient than conventional precoding schemes.

Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) are gaining huge momentum in the field of wireless communications due to the paradigm shift that they bring. Indeed, they allow making any environment electromagnetically smart and dynamically reconfigurable for more efficient and greener wireless communications. As physicists, we proposed to use electronically tunable metasurfaces to shape the electromagnetic waves carrying our wireless communications in reflection almost ten years ago, inspired by some works that we and colleagues did in the field of wave control in complex media. In this article, we review the seminal works that led us to propose this concept, starting from the original one that is time reversal. Then, we propose a physicist’s point of view of RISs using a comparison with phase conjugation. Finally, we highlight what we think are their limitations, relying on both our knowledge of wave control and our study of them over a decade.

This is the second article in a series of two which report on a matrix approach for ultrasound imaging in heterogeneous media. This article describes the quantification and correction of aberration, i.e. the distortion of an image caused by spatial variations in the medium speed-of-sound. Adaptive focusing can compensate for aberration, but is only effective over a restricted area called the isoplanatic patch. Here, we use an experimentally-recorded matrix of reflected acoustic signals to synthesize a set of virtual transducers. We then examine wave propagation between these virtual transducers and an arbitrary correction plane. Such wave-fronts consist of two components: (i) An ideal geometric wave-front linked to diffraction and the input focusing point, and; (ii) Phase distortions induced by the speed-of-sound variations. These distortions are stored in a so-called distortion matrix, the singular value decomposition of which gives access to an optimized focusing law at any point. We show that, by decoupling the aberrations undergone by the outgoing and incoming waves and applying an iterative strategy, compensation for even high-order and spatially-distributed aberrations can be achieved. After a numerical validation of the process, ultrasound matrix imaging (UMI) is applied to the in-vivo imaging of a gallbladder. A map of isoplanatic modes is retrieved and is shown to be strongly correlated with the arrangement of tissues constituting the medium. The corresponding focusing laws yield an ultrasound image with drastically improved contrast and transverse resolution. UMI thus provides a flexible and powerful route towards computational ultrasound.

This is the first article in a series of two dealing with a matrix approach for aberration quantification and correction in ultrasound imaging. Advanced synthetic beamforming relies on a double focusing operation at transmission and reception on each point of the medium. Ultrasound matrix imaging (UMI) consists in decoupling the location of these transmitted and received focal spots. The response between those virtual transducers form the so-called focused reflection matrix that actually contains much more information than a confocal ultrasound image. In this paper, a time-frequency analysis of this matrix is performed, which highlights the single and multiple scattering contributions as well as the impact of aberrations in the monochromatic and broadband regimes. Interestingly, this analysis enables the measurement of the incoherent input-output point spread function at any pixel of this image. A fitting process enables the quantification of the single scattering, multiple scattering and noise components in the image. From the single scattering contribution, a focusing criterion is defined, and its evolution used to quantify the amount of aberration throughout the ultrasound image. In contrast to the state-of-the-art coherence factor, this new indicator is robust to multiple scattering and electronic noise, thereby providing a contrasted map of the focusing quality at a much better transverse resolution. After a validation of the proof-of-concept based on time-domain simulations, UMI is applied to the in-vivo study of a human calf. Beyond this specific example, UMI opens a new route for speed-of-sound and scattering quantification in ultrasound imaging.

MISO Time-Reversal (TR) communication marks a paradigm shift for ultrawideband (UWB) communications because the processing is mainly carried out by the transmitter, which is ideal for some applications. Thanks to its focusing property, TR is naturally dedicated to multiple access trans-mission (TRDMA). Previous research works have focused on the theoretical performance of TRDMA. In this paper, Multi-user MISO (MU-MISO) TRDMA transmission is evaluated experimentally for the first time to the best of our knowledge, and by simulations. An experimental setup is used to measure the TRDMA signals for different bandwidth in multi-user scenario. The experimental results are then used in a simulation to evaluate the bit error rate and the performance of the system.

The assessment of disrupted myocardial fiber arrangement may help to understand and diagnose hypertrophic or ischemic cardiomyopathy. We hereby proposed and developed shear wave imaging (SWI), which is an echocardiography-based, noninvasive, real-time, and easy-to-use technique, to map myofiber orientation. Five in vitro porcine and three in vivo open-chest ovine hearts were studied. Known in physics, shear wave propagates faster along than across the fiber direction. SWI is a technique that can generate shear waves travelling in different directions with respect to each myocardial layer. SWI further analyzed the shear wave velocity across the entire left-ventricular (LV) myocardial thickness, ranging between 10 (diastole) and 25 mm (systole), with a resolution of 0.2 mm in the middle segment of the LV anterior wall region. The fiber angle at each myocardial layer was thus estimated by finding the maximum shear wave speed. In the in vitro porcine myocardium (n=5) , the SWI-estimated fiber angles gradually changed from +80° ± 7° (endocardium) to +30° ± 13° (midwall) and -40° ± 10° (epicardium) with 0° aligning with the circumference of the heart. This transmural fiber orientation was well correlated with histology findings. SWI further succeeded in mapping the transmural fiber orientation in three beating ovine hearts in vivo. At midsystole, the average fiber orientation exhibited 71° ± 13° (endocardium), 27° ± 8° (midwall), and -26° ± 30° (epicardium). We demonstrated the capability of SWI in mapping myocardial fiber orientation in vitro and in vivo. SWI may serve as a new tool for the noninvasive characterization of myocardial fiber structure.

Shear wave imaging was evaluated for the in vivo assessment of myocardial biomechanical properties on ten open chest sheep. The use of dedicated ultrasonic sequences implemented on a very high frame rate ultrasonic scanner ( > 5000 frames per second) enables the estimation of the quantitative shear modulus of myocardium several times during one cardiac cycle. A 128 element probe remotely generates a shear wave thanks to the radiation force induced by a focused ultrasonic burst. The resulting shear wave propagation is tracked using the same probe by cross-correlating successive ultrasonic images acquired at a very high frame rate. The shear wave speed estimated at each location in the ultrasonic image gives access to the local myocardial stiffness (shear modulus μ). The technique was found to be reproducible (standard deviation ) and able to estimate both systolic and diastolic stiffness on each sheep (respectively μ(dias) ≈ 2 kPa and μ(syst) ≈ 30 kPa). Moreover, the ability of the proposed method to polarize the shear wave generation and propagation along a chosen axis permits the study the local elastic anisotropy of myocardial muscle. As expected, myocardial elastic anisotropy is found to vary with muscle depth. The real time capabilities and potential of Shear Wave Imaging using ultrafast scanners for cardiac applications is finally illustrated by studying the dynamics of this fractional anisotropy during the cardiac cycle.

A combination of radiation force and ultrafast ultrasound imaging is used to both generate and track the propagation of a shear wave in the brain whose local speed is directly related to stiffness, characterized by the dynamic shear modulus G*. When performed on trepanated rats, this approach called shear wave imaging (SWI) provides 3-D brain elasticity maps reaching a spatial resolution of 0.7 mm×1 mm×0.4 mm with a good reproducibility (<13%). The dynamic shear modulus of brain tissues exhibits values in the 2-25 kPa range with a mean value of 12 kPa and is quantified for different anatomical regions. The anisotropy of the shear wave propagation is studied and the first in vivo anisotropy map of brain elasticity is provided. The propagation is found to be isotropic in three gray matter regions but highly anisotropic in two white matter regions. The good temporal resolution (~10 ms per acquisition) of SWI also allows a dynamic estimation of brain elasticity to within a single cardiac cycle, showing that brain pulsatility does not transiently modify local elasticity. SWI proves its potential for the study of pathological modifications of brain elasticity both in small animal models and in clinical intra-operative imaging.

In vivo assessment of dispersion affecting the propagation of visco-elastic waves in soft tissues is key to understand the rheology of human tissues. In this paper, the ability of the supersonic shear imaging (SSI) technique to generate planar shear waves propagating in tissues is fully exploited. First, by strongly limiting shear wave diffraction in the imaging plane, this imaging technique enables to discriminate between the usually concomitant influences of both medium rheological properties and diffraction affecting the shear wave dispersion. Second, transient propagation of these plane shear waves in soft tissues can be measured using echographic images acquired at very high frame. In vitro and in vivo experiments demonstrate that dispersion curves, which characterize the rheological behavior of tissues by measuring the frequency dependence of shear wave speed and attenuation, can be recovered in the 75-600 Hz frequency range. Based on a phase difference algorithm, the dispersion curves are computed in 1 cm2 regions of interest from the acquired propagation movie. In vivo measurements in Biceps Brachii muscle and liver of three healthy volunteers show important differences in the rheological behavior of these different tissues. Liver tissue appears to be much more dispersive with a phase velocity ranging from approximately 1.5 m/s at 75 Hz to approximately 3 m/s at 500 Hz whereas muscle tissue shows an important anisotropy, shear waves propagating longitudinally to the muscular fibers are almost nondispersive while those propagating transversally are very dispersive with a shear wave speed ranging from 0.5 to 2 m/s between 75 and 500 Hz. The estimation of dispersion curves is local and can be performed separately in different regions of the organ. This signal processing approach based on the SSI modality introduces the new concept of in vivo shear wave spectroscopy (SWS) that could become an additional tool for tissue characterization. This paper demonstrates the in vivo ability of this SWS to quantify both local shear elasticity and dispersion in real time.

The noninvasive estimation of in vivo mechanical properties of cornea is envisioned to find several applications in ophthalmology. Such high-resolution measurements of local cornea stiffness could lead to a better anticipation and understanding of corneal pathologies such as Keratoconus. It could also provide a quantitative evaluation of corneal biomechanical response after corneal refractive surgeries and a tool for evaluating the efficacy of new cornea treatments such as cornea transplant using femtosecond laser or therapy based on Riboflavin/UltraViolet-A Corneal Cross Linking (UVA CXL). In the very important issue of glaucoma diagnosis and management, the fine tuning corneal elasticity measurement could also succeed to strongly correlate the applanation tonometry with the "true" intra-ocular pressure (IOP). This initial investigation evaluates the ability of ultrafast and high-resolution ultrasonic systems to provide a real-time and quantitative mapping of corneal viscoelasticity. Quantitative elasticity maps were acquired ex vivo on porcine cornea using the supersonic shear imaging (SSI) technique. A conventional 15 MHz linear probe was used to perform conventional ultrasonic imaging of the cornea. A dedicated ultrasonic sequence combines the generation of a remote palpation in the cornea and ultrafast (20,000 frames/s) ultrasonic imaging of the resulting corneal displacements that evolve into a shear wave propagation whose local speed was directly linked to local elasticity. A quantitative high-resolution map (150 microm resolution) of local corneal elasticity can be provided by this dedicated sequence of ultrasonic insonifications. Quantitative maps of corneal elasticity were obtained on ex vivo freshly enucleated porcine corneas. In the cornea, a quite homogenous stiffness map was found with a 190 kPa +/- 32 kPa mean elasticity. The influence of photodynamic Riboflavin/UVA induced CXL was measured. A significant Young's modulus increase was obtained with a mean 890 kPa +/- 250 kPa posttreatment Young's modulus (460% increase), located in the anterior part of the cornea. Simulations based on 3-D time domain finite differences simulation were also performed and found to be in good agreement with ex vivo experiments. The SSI technique can perform real-time, noninvasive, high-resolution, and quantitative maps of the whole corneal elasticity. This technique could be real time and straightforward adapted for a very wide field of in vivo investigations.

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 ofin-vivobreast lesions. Lastly, we present initial results for using magnetic resonance imaging and acoustic radiation force together for high-intensity focused ultrasound interventions.

Transcranial imaging of the brain is currently limited by the defocusing effect of the skull bone (absorption, diffusion and refraction of ultrasounds). A brief review of the various techniques developed in the last decades to correct the aberrations induced by the skull bone is first presented. A noninvasive brain imaging device is presented that takes into account the defocusing effect of the skull. This device is made of two identical "twin" linear arrays located on each side of the head. It is shown how to differentiate the respective influence of the two bone windows on the path of an ultrasonic wave going from one array to the other, and how to estimate at each frequency the attenuation and phase shift locally induced by each of the bone windows. This information is then used to perform adaptive focusing through the skull. Compared to uncorrected wave fronts, the spatial shift of the focal point is cancelled, the width of the focal spot is reduced, and sidelobes level is decreased up to 10dB. Simulated structural transcranial images of a brain model are presented to exhibit the improvement in image quality provided by this new noninvasive adaptive focusing method.