$21,000 Research Grant

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31974, 29 April 1969, Page 14

$21,000 Research Grant

A grant of $21,000 has i been awarded front Britain to Professor L. Kay, of the University! of Canterbury’s elec-1 ; trical engineering dei partment, to help in the development of an ultrasonic camera for obtain-' ling pictures of the internal microstructure of solids and possibly body tissue. Techniques developed are thought not ! to have been duplicated i anywhere else in the ' world. The grant, announced by I the Vice-Chancellor (Professor N. C. Phillips) at a meeting of the University i Council yesterday, has been ■ made by the National Rei search Development Corpora- ■ tion. Professor Kay said yesterday that he made preliminary i investigations in the field! ' while at the University of I Birmingham. But it was onlyafter work begun at the UniI versity of Canterbury in 1966 that significant progress was • made through the work of research students, Messrs M. G. Maginness and G. B. Cook. I

Last September, Mr Maginness obtained the first crude pictures of two holes inside a block of metal. This had been done by using ultrasonic energy to illuminate the in-; side of the block in much the l same way as a floodlight could ’ be used to illuminate a hole.; In addition, a computer had been used to give the sainej effect as a lens in a camera, in order to produce a focused image. “When working with solids; and body tissue, an acoustic! lens cannot be used except; externally of the material be-; ing examined,” Professor Kay l said. “This severely limits the advantages of ultrasonic energy as compared with, say X-rays. "By electronically processing signals obtained at the surface of the material, it is possible to simulate a lens inside a solid.” The results were sufficiently encouraging to warrant an application to the National Research Development Cor- ' poration for a grant by Professor Kay during a visit to the United Kingdom in Octo- i her last year. This grant is|i an outcome of his visit. i During the next 18 months, i the team which is specifically ; supported by the grant will investigate the potential of ; the system to assess its value

in the metallurgical and medical fields. Asked how the new tech- ; nique would be used. Professor Kay said that in the metallurgical field in research (laboratories it could be used ’to investigate differences in : large solids. Sound waves were particu-' ! larly valuable in research on solids because mechanical stress waves indicated mechanical properties and tended (to show up certain types of' defects better than other i means. , In the medical field, ultra-! sonic waves were used for looking at various discontinuities in the body structure—i possibly to examine the abdo-( men to establish the presence 1 of cysts, for example. The amount of detail was; limited with the use of present methods, but with tech-j niques developed at Canter-j bury greater detail could be hoped for. One advantage was that it was not dangerous..; Professor Kay emphasised that the main centre of interest at present was in the applii cation of the technique in metallurgical research. He i said he could not speculate greatly on its application in medicine because it had not yet been used for pictures of body tissue.