Pulse-echo based method for estimation of speed of sound
Master's thesis and projects
– Ultrasound technology
The Department of circulation and medical imaging offers projects and master's thesis topics for technology students of most of the different technical study programmes at NTNU. There is a seperate page for the supplementary specialisation courses.
List of topics
Topics for thesis and projects are given below. Most of the topics can be adjusted to the students qualifications and wishes.
Don't hesitate to take contact with the corresponding supervisor - we're looking forward to a discussion with you!
Pulse-echo based method for estimation of speed of sound
Accurate and spatially dense measurements of sound speed in a medium could potentially be used to obtain better ultrasound image quality, better characterization of biological tissue and for monitoring of thermal ablation. To estimate the sound speed in a medium, we need to have the travel time of the sound pulse traveling a known path length. The difficulty of sound speed estimation using conventional medical imaging ultrasound transducers is that the real or true depth of the origin of the backscattered echo is unknown, as the travel time will be dependent on both the distance and sound speed.
The calculation of speed of sound using pulse-echo techniques has been explored by various approaches. We have suggested a method using the recorded partial time delay between receivers to calculate the speed of sound of the medium.
Aim:
- Compare the given method to other published methods for estimating speed of sound (litterature study)
- Implement the method in Matlab
- Evaluate the method using synthetic data
- Performing laboratory measurements
- Analyse the performance of the method
Qualifications:
- Matlab programming, digital signal processing. Knowledge of acoustics and ultrasound is also advantageous.