Gregg E. Trahey

Professor

Dr. Trahey's research interests include medical ultrasound, image guided surgery, adaptive imaging, imaging of tissue's mechanical properties, and radiation force imaging.

Research in Dr. Trahey's laboratory focuses on experimental investigations of advanced ultrasonic imaging methods with a focus on cardiac and liver imaging. The laboratory's experimental capabilities are centered around several state-of-the-art clinical phased array scanners in facilities in the Pratt School of Engineering and the Duke University Medical Center. Through collaborative agreements with Siemens Ultrasound, researchers in Dr. Trahey's laboratory are able to reconfigure these scanners in novel imaging modes, connect custom transducers and circuitry to these scanners, and collect raw radio-frequency data from individual elements or collections of elements during clinical or phantom trials. Students in this laboratory design custom transducer arrays, program ultrasonic scanners to implement novel methods of transmitting ultrasonic signals and processing echoes, and conduct theoretical, clinical, and phantom trials of these methods.

A major NIH-funded effort in this area looks at the ability of Acoustic Radiation Force Impulse (ARFI) imaging, to detect and characterize liver cancers and to guide minimally invasive surgeries of liver and kidney cancer. ARFI imaging was developed in Dr. Trahey's laboratory.

Other NIH-funded efforts focus on cardiovascular application of ARFI imaging. Clinical trials are underway to assess the ability of ARFI imaging to characterize vascular plaques as stable or vulnerable and to measure the stiffness of blood vessels. Ongoing trials are also being conducted to assess the ability of ARFI imaging to guide cardiac ablation surgeries and to characterize the stiffness of the myocardium throughout the cardiac cycle. Each of these efforts involves the development of novel ultrasonic pulse sequences, investigations of the physics of tissue mechanics and the propagation of sound through tissue, and the development and evaluation of novel signal and image processing methods.

Contact Information: