Jim Miller | |
---|---|
Born | 1942 St. Louis, Missouri |
Alma mater | Saint Louis University Washington University in St. Louis |
Awards | National Institutes of Health MERIT Award Rayleigh Award, IEEE Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control Society Joseph H. Holmes Basic Science Pioneer Award, American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine Silver medal, Acoustical Society of America |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Biophysics Echocardiography Ultrasonics |
Institutions | Washington University in St. Louis |
Doctoral advisor | Daniel Isadore Bolef |
Notable students | William E. Moerner |
James (Jim) Gegan Miller is an American physicist, engineer, and inventor whose primary interests center around biomedical physics. He is currently a professor of physics, Medicine, and Biomedical Engineering, emeritus, at Washington University in St. Louis, where he holds the Albert Gordon Hill Endowed Chair in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. [1] He is notable for his interdisciplinary contributions to biomedical physics, echocardiography, and ultrasonics. [2]
Miller grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, and received his bachelor's degree in physics, summa cum laude, from Saint Louis University in 1964. He went on to receive master's and doctoral degrees from Washington University in St. Louis in 1966 and 1969, respectively. [3] His doctoral advisor was Daniel Isadore Bolef. [4]
Thereafter he was hired as assistant professor of physics and earned tenure 2 years later, in 1970. [3] He is now Albert Gordon Hill Chair of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Director of the Laboratory of Ultrasonics. [5]
For about four decades, Miller taught a course titled "Physics of the Heart" at Washington University. He won the college's Faculty Teaching Award in 1989 and the Emerson Teaching Award in 2004. Over the course of his career, he mentored 35 graduate students and numerous undergraduates, including Nobel Laureate in Chemistry William E. Moerner. [6]
Miller has published more than 165 refereed journal articles and 110 conference proceedings and book chapters. [7] His work has contributed greatly to ultrasonics, myocardial tissue characterization and has been incorporated into echocardiography devices in use throughout the world. [3]
Ultrasound is sound with frequencies greater than 20 kilohertz. This frequency is the approximate upper audible limit of human hearing in healthy young adults. The physical principles of acoustic waves apply to any frequency range, including ultrasound. Ultrasonic devices operate with frequencies from 20 kHz up to several gigahertz.
Laser-ultrasonics uses lasers to generate and detect ultrasonic waves. It is a non-contact technique used to measure materials thickness, detect flaws and carry out materials characterization. The basic components of a laser-ultrasonic system are a generation laser, a detection laser and a detector.
Contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) is the application of ultrasound contrast medium to traditional medical sonography. Ultrasound contrast agents rely on the different ways in which sound waves are reflected from interfaces between substances. This may be the surface of a small air bubble or a more complex structure. Commercially available contrast media are gas-filled microbubbles that are administered intravenously to the systemic circulation. Microbubbles have a high degree of echogenicity. There is a great difference in echogenicity between the gas in the microbubbles and the soft tissue surroundings of the body. Thus, ultrasonic imaging using microbubble contrast agents enhances the ultrasound backscatter, (reflection) of the ultrasound waves, to produce a sonogram with increased contrast due to the high echogenicity difference. Contrast-enhanced ultrasound can be used to image blood perfusion in organs, measure blood flow rate in the heart and other organs, and for other applications.
Doppler echocardiography is a procedure that uses Doppler ultrasonography to examine the heart. An echocardiogram uses high frequency sound waves to create an image of the heart while the use of Doppler technology allows determination of the speed and direction of blood flow by utilizing the Doppler effect.
Ultrasonic transducers and ultrasonic sensors are devices that generate or sense ultrasound energy. They can be divided into three broad categories: transmitters, receivers and transceivers. Transmitters convert electrical signals into ultrasound, receivers convert ultrasound into electrical signals, and transceivers can both transmit and receive ultrasound.
The ASA Silver Medal is an award presented by the Acoustical Society of America to individuals, without age limitation, for contributions to the advancement of science, engineering, or human welfare through the application of acoustic principles or through research accomplishments in acoustics. The medal is awarded in a number of categories depending on the technical committee responsible for making the nomination.
Floyd Dunn was an American electrical engineer who made contributions to all aspects of the interaction of ultrasound and biological media. Dunn was a member of Scientific Committee 66 of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements as well as many FDA, NIH, AIUM, and ASA committees. He collaborated with scientists in the UK, Japan, China and Post-Soviet states.
Thermoacoustic imaging was originally proposed by Theodore Bowen in 1981 as a strategy for studying the absorption properties of human tissue using virtually any kind of electromagnetic radiation. But Alexander Graham Bell first reported the physical principle upon which thermoacoustic imaging is based a century earlier. He observed that audible sound could be created by illuminating an intermittent beam of sunlight onto a rubber sheet. Shortly after Bowen's work was published, other researchers proposed methodology for thermoacoustic imaging using microwaves. In 1994 researchers used an infrared laser to produce the first thermoacoustic images of near-infrared optical absorption in a tissue-mimicking phantom, albeit in two dimensions (2D). In 1995 other researchers formulated a general reconstruction algorithm by which 2D thermoacoustic images could be computed from their "projections," i.e. thermoacoustic computed tomography (TCT). By 1998 researchers at Indiana University Medical Center extended TCT to 3D and employed pulsed microwaves to produce the first fully three-dimensional (3D) thermoacoustic images of biologic tissue [an excised lamb kidney ]. The following year they created the first fully 3D thermoacoustic images of cancer in the human breast, again using pulsed microwaves. Since that time, thermoacoustic imaging has gained widespread popularity in research institutions worldwide. As of 2008, three companies were developing commercial thermoacoustic imaging systems – Seno Medical, Endra, Inc. and OptoSonics, Inc.
Mathias Fink, born in 1945 in Grenoble, is a French physicist, professor at ESPCI Paris and member of the French Academy of Sciences.
Roman Grigorievich Maev , is a Canadian professor of physics at the University of Windsor, distinguished university professor, the Foreign Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) (2019), full professor in physics (2005), Dr. Sc. (2002), Ph. D. (1973). Maev is the founding director of the Institute for Diagnostic Imaging Research at the University of Windsor.
The IEEE Biomedical Engineering Award is a Technical Field Award of the IEEE given annually for outstanding contributions to the field of biomedical engineering. It was established in 2010.
Mack Alfred Breazeale was an American physicist particularly known for his work in ultrasonics and physical acoustics. Breazeale is widely regarded as one of the leading acousticians of the 20th century, highly accomplished in both theory and experiment. When he died, he was a retired distinguished research professor and senior scientist at the National Center for Physical Acoustics at the University of Mississippi. Born in Leona Mines, Virginia, Breazeale grew up near Crossville, TN. Educated at Berea College, the Missouri School of Mines, and the Michigan State University, he was a tireless researcher and trained many others in the field of physics. Before his appointment at the National Center for Physical Acoustics, he was professor of physics at the University of Tennessee (1962-1995) and at Michigan State University (1957-1962). A longtime editor of the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, he was a fellow of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) and received its Silver Medal in 1988. He was a fellow of the Institute of electrical and Electronics Engineers and Great Britain's Institute of Acoustics, and had been a Fulbright Research Fellow in Stuttgart, Germany early in his career.
Timothy Grant Leighton is a British scientist who was a Professor of Ultrasonics and Underwater Acoustics at the University of Southampton. He is the inventor-in-chief of Sloan Water Technology Ltd., a company founded around his inventions. He is an academician of three national academies. Trained in physics and theoretical physics, he works across physical, medical, biological, social and ocean sciences, fluid dynamics and engineering. He joined the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research (ISVR) at the University of Southampton in 1992 as a lecturer in underwater acoustics, and completed the monograph The Acoustic Bubble in the same year. He was awarded a personal chair at the age of 35 and has authored over 400 publications.
Floyd Alburn Firestone (1898–1986) was an acoustical physicist. In 1940 while a professor at the University of Michigan invented the first practical ultrasonic testing method and apparatus. He was granted U.S. patent 2,280,226 for the invention in 1942. Manufactured by Sperry Corporation, the testing device was known variously as the Firestone-Sperry Reflectoscope, the Sperry Ultrasonic Reflectoscope, the Sperry Reflectoscope and sometimes also just as a Supersonic Reflectoscope, the name Firestone had coined for the instrument. The technology is not just used in quality control in factories to reject defective parts before shipment, but also revolutionized transportation safety. For example, ultrasonic testing is used for safety maintenance inspection of railroad cars, particularly axles and wheels, aircraft, particularly fuselages, and other transportation vessels for material fatigue. Dr. Firestone's ultrasonic pulse echo technique for metal defect testing was also later applied in medical diagnosis, giving birth to the field of Echocardiography and to the field of Medical Ultrasonography, generally. Dr. Firestone was the editor of the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America from 1939 to 1957. Among Firestone's many other inventions, were in a single year an “automatic device for the minute inspection of flaws”, “a new and useful improvement in hook-up of electrical apparatus”, and “[a] device for measuring noise”, and, even, later a “musical typewriter”.
Muyinatu "Bisi" A. Lediju Bell is the John C. Malone Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University. She is also the director of the Photoacoustic and Ultrasonic Systems Engineering Laboratory.
Kathryn Radabaugh Nightingale is an American biomedical engineer and academic in the field of medical ultrasound. She is the Theo Pilkington Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Duke University, and an elected fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) and the National Academy of Inventors (NAI).
Ronald A. Roy is an American engineer, physicist, and academic, who is an expert in physical acoustics and its applications to ultrasonics, biomedical acoustics, acousto-optics, cavitation, and bubble swarm acoustics.
Katherine Whittaker Ferrara is an American engineer who is a professor of radiology at Stanford University. Ferrara has been elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering.
John Vig is a physicist, executive and inventor. His career has been with the U.S. Army Research Lab and he has also been active with the IEEE. He is known for his inventions in UV-ozone cleaning, chemical polishing of quartz surfaces, polyimide bonding of resonators and noise in MEMS.
Gregg E. Trahey is an American biomedical engineer and academic in the field of medical ultrasound. He is the Robert Plonsey Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Duke University. In 2022, he was named a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) "for contributions to speckle tracking and acoustic radiation force impulse imaging in medical ultrasound".