Biomedical Applications of Acoustical Microscopy

Even from the beginnings of acoustical microscopy in the mid-1970’s, biomedical problems were thought to be an important application area for this new technology. In fact, some of the first acoustical microscopy images produced by both Quate at Stanford and Kessler at Zenith were of biological structures. Unfortunately, over the past two decades the wide application of acoustical microscopy to biomedicine never developed as initially predicted. Recently, however, a new generation of biomedical scientists have rediscovered acoustical microscopy and are applying this tool to a myriad of applications in both the basic sciences as well as diagnostic medicine. Biologists are beginning to apply acoustical microscopy to the study of living cells, including cellular development and biochemical processes, in a way simply not possible with any other imaging modality. Pathologists are beginning to use acoustical microscopy to develop a new gold standard by which tissue changes and disease processes may be defined. Medical scientists are developing new tools, based on acoustical microscopy technology, for the noninvasive and minimally invasive diagnosis of tissue state.