Innovation was the main topic at the Fall Conference Day for the Centre for Innovative Ultrasound Solutions (CIUS). Invited guest speakers, industry partners and CIUS researchers presented the latest, and coming, technology and applications within ultrasound.
CIUS industry partners Aurotech Ultrasound AS opened the conference with an overview over their MANUS platform, which has been sold to about 20 companies, including fellow CIUS partner Medistim, for use in medical and industry applications. The audience was also given a preview of exciting news to come.
Statoil was the second CIUS partner to present at the fall conference autumn, and the emphasis was on oil and gas well integrity and drilling efficiency. A series of challenges were opened up for grabs for CIUS researchers. CIUS Director Asta Håberg, could also reveal that Statoil will share all data logs from the Gullfaks oil & gas field in the North Sea with CIUS researchers.
Invited speaker Professor Paul Wilcox from Bristol University followed with a presentation on Non-Destructive Testing done at the Department of Mechanical Engineering. His research group, Ultrasound and non-destructive testing, records all data from ultrasound scans (full matrix capture), and then use post-processing of the data to get more out of the arrays. One application is to use ultrasound for the inspection of welds in industry.
Professor Robin Cleveland at Oxford University and the BUBBL: Non-Invasive Therapy & Drug Delivery group presented his work on using high intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) to kill tumours in liver and kidney cancer. He also gave an overview over a project using ultrasound to guide surgeons in repairing degenerated discs in patients suffering from lower back pain.
New to this year’s CIUS conference, was a slot with eight presentations given in the style of Pecha Kucha, which bases itself on using 20 slides with 20 seconds per slide. The topics ranged from machine learning to marine and medical applications. The winner by popular vote and jury decision, was PostDoc Solveig Fadnes with the presentation “Detailed flow imaging of the developing foetal heart”.
CIUS Industry Liason officer held a presentation on Innovation and the routines for registering innovations in CIUS, and the communications officer talked about CIUS presence in social media.
The final academic presentation for the day was with Senior consultant Bjørnar Grenne, who presented the study on prehospital risk stratification in acute coronary syndrome (PreCAS-study). The background being that ECG fails to identify every other patient with coronary heart failure, and the proposal is to therefore use ultrasound echocardiography in the ambulance so the patient is sent to the right hospital.
The conference was concluded by CIUS Board director Eva Nilssen.
