Combined ARFI and Shear Wave Imaging of Prostate Cancer: Optimizing Beam Sequences and Parameter Reconstruction Approaches.

This study demonstrates the implementation of a shear wave reconstruction algorithm that enables concurrent acoustic radiation force impulse (ARFI) imaging and shear wave elasticity imaging (SWEI) of prostate cancer and zonal anatomy. The combined ARFI/SWEI sequence uses closely spaced push beams across the lateral field of view and simultaneously tracks both on-axis (within the region of excitation) and off-axis (laterally offset from the excitation) after each push beam. Using a large number of push beams across the lateral field of view enables the collection of higher signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) shear wave data to reconstruct the SWEI volume than is typically acquired. The shear wave arrival times were determined with cross-correlation of shear wave velocity signals in two dimensions after 3-D directional filtering to remove reflection artifacts. To combine data from serially interrogated lateral push locations, arrival times from different pushes were aligned by estimating the shear wave propagation time between push locations. Shear wave data acquired in an elasticity lesion phantom and reconstructed using this algorithm demonstrate benefits to contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) with increased push beam density and 3-D directional filtering. Increasing the push beam spacing from 0.3 to 11.6 mm (typical for commercial SWEI systems) resulted in a 53% decrease in CNR. In human in vivo data, this imaging approach enabled high CNR (1.61-1.86) imaging of histologically-confirmed prostate cancer. The in vivo images had improved spatial resolution and CNR and fewer reflection artifacts as a result of the high push beam density, the high shear wave SNR, the use of multidimensional directional filtering, and the combination of shear wave data from different push beams.

Field-only surface integral equations: scattering from a perfect electric conductor.

A field-only boundary integral formulation of electromagnetics is derived without the use of surface currents that appear in the Stratton-Chu formulation. For scattering by a perfect electrical conductor (PEC), the components of the electric field are obtained directly from surface integral equation solutions of three scalar Helmholtz equations for the field components. The divergence-free condition is enforced via a boundary condition on the normal component of the field and its normal derivative. Field values and their normal derivatives at the surface of the PEC are obtained directly from surface integral equations that do not contain divergent kernels. Consequently, high-order elements with fewer degrees of freedom can be used to represent surface features to a higher precision than the traditional planar elements. This theoretical framework is illustrated with numerical examples that provide further physical insight into the role of the surface curvature in scattering problems.

Field-only surface integral equations: scattering from a dielectric body.

An efficient field-only nonsingular surface integral method to solve Maxwell's equations for the components of the electric field on the surface of a dielectric scatterer is introduced. In this method, both the vector wave equation and the divergence-free constraint are satisfied inside and outside the scatterer. The divergence-free condition is replaced by an equivalent boundary condition that relates the normal derivatives of the electric field across the surface of the scatterer. Also, the continuity and jump conditions on the electric and magnetic fields are expressed in terms of the electric field across the surface of the scatterer. Together with these boundary conditions, the scalar Helmholtz equation for the components of the electric field inside and outside the scatterer is solved by a fully desingularized surface integral method. Compared with the most popular surface integral methods based on the Stratton-Chu formulation or the Poggio-Miller-Chew-Harrington-Wu-Tsai (PMCHWT) formulation, our method is conceptually simpler and numerically straightforward because there is no need to introduce intermediate quantities such as surface currents, and the use of complicated vector basis functions can be avoided altogether. Also, our method is not affected by numerical issues such as the zero-frequency catastrophe and does not contain integrals with (strong) singularities. To illustrate the robustness and versatility of our method, we show examples in the Rayleigh, Mie, and geometrical optics scattering regimes. Given the symmetry between the electric field and the magnetic field, our theoretical framework can also be used to solve for the magnetic field.

Long-term Survival After Surgery Compared With Concurrent Chemoradiation for Node-negative Small Cell Lung Cancer.

OBJECTIVE: To determine whether surgery with adjuvant chemotherapy offers a survival advantage over concurrent chemoradiation for patients with cT1-2N0M0 small cell lung cancer (SCLC). BACKGROUND: Although surgery with adjuvant chemotherapy is the recommended treatment for patients with cT1-2N0M0 SCLC per international guidelines, there have been no prospective or retrospective studies evaluating the impact of surgery versus optimal medical management for cT1-2N0M0 SCLC. METHODS: Outcomes of patients with cT1-2N0M0 SCLC who underwent surgery with adjuvant chemotherapy or concurrent chemoradiation in the National Cancer Data Base (2003-2011) were evaluated using Cox proportional hazards analyses and propensity-score-matched analyses. RESULTS: During the study period, 681 (30%) patients underwent surgery with adjuvant chemotherapy and 1620 (70%) underwent concurrent chemoradiation. After propensity-score matching, all 14 covariates were well balanced between the surgery (n = 501) and concurrent chemoradiation (n = 501) groups. Surgery was associated with a higher overall survival (OS) than concurrent chemoradiation (5-year OS 47.6% vs 29.8%, P < 0.01). To minimize selection bias due to comorbidities, we limited the propensity-matched analysis to 492 patients with no comorbidities; surgery remained associated with a higher OS than concurrent chemoradiation (5-year OS 49.2% vs 32.5%, P < 0.01). CONCLUSIONS: In a national analysis, surgery with adjuvant chemotherapy was used in the minority of patients for early stage SCLC. Surgery with adjuvant chemotherapy for node-negative SCLC was associated with improved long-term survival when compared to concurrent chemoradiation. These results suggest a significant underuse of surgery among patients with early stage SCLC and support an increased role of surgery in multimodality therapy for cT1-2N0M0 SCLC.

Coalescence Dynamics of Mobile and Immobile Fluid Interfaces.

Coalescence dynamics between deformable bubbles and droplets can be dramatically affected by the mobility of the interfaces with fully tangentially mobile bubble-liquid or droplet-liquid interfaces expected to accelerate the coalescence by orders of magnitude. However, there is a lack of systematic experimental investigations that quantify this effect. By using high speed camera imaging we examine the free rise and coalescence of small air-bubbles (100 to 1300 µm in diameter) with a liquid interface. A perfluorocarbon liquid, PP11, is used as a model liquid to investigate coalescence dynamics between fully mobile and immobile deformable interfaces. The mobility of the bubble surface was determined by measuring the terminal rise velocity of small bubbles rising at Reynolds numbers, Re, less than 0.1 and the mobility of free PP11 surface by measuring the deceleration kinetics of the small bubble toward the interface. Induction or film drainage times of a bubble at the mobile PP11-air surface were found to be more than 2 orders of magnitude shorter compared to the case of bubble and an immobile PP11-water interface. A theoretical model is used to illustrate the effect of hydrodynamics and interfacial mobility on the induction time or film drainage time. The results of this study are expected to stimulate the development of a comprehensive theoretical model for coalescence dynamics between two fully or partially mobile fluid interfaces.

Stabilization of Leidenfrost vapour layer by textured superhydrophobic surfaces.

In 1756, Leidenfrost observed that water drops skittered on a sufficiently hot skillet, owing to levitation by an evaporative vapour film. Such films are stable only when the hot surface is above a critical temperature, and are a central phenomenon in boiling. In this so-called Leidenfrost regime, the low thermal conductivity of the vapour layer inhibits heat transfer between the hot surface and the liquid. When the temperature of the cooling surface drops below the critical temperature, the vapour film collapses and the system enters a nucleate-boiling regime, which can result in vapour explosions that are particularly detrimental in certain contexts, such as in nuclear power plants. The presence of these vapour films can also reduce liquid-solid drag. Here we show how vapour film collapse can be completely suppressed at textured superhydrophobic surfaces. At a smooth hydrophobic surface, the vapour film still collapses on cooling, albeit at a reduced critical temperature, and the system switches explosively to nucleate boiling. In contrast, at textured, superhydrophobic surfaces, the vapour layer gradually relaxes until the surface is completely cooled, without exhibiting a nucleate-boiling phase. This result demonstrates that topological texture on superhydrophobic materials is critical in stabilizing the vapour layer and thus in controlling--by heat transfer--the liquid-gas phase transition at hot surfaces. This concept can potentially be applied to control other phase transitions, such as ice or frost formation, and to the design of low-drag surfaces at which the vapour phase is stabilized in the grooves of textures without heating.

Field-only integral equation method for time domain scattering of electromagnetic pulses.

The scattering of electromagnetic pulses is described using a non-singular boundary integral method to solve directly for the field components in the frequency domain, and Fourier transform is then used to obtain the complete space-time behavior. This approach is stable for wavelengths both small and large relative to characteristic length scales. Amplitudes and phases of field values can be obtained accurately on or near material boundaries. Local field enhancement effects due to multiple scattering of interest to applications in microphotonics are demonstrated.

Space-time domain solutions of the wave equation by a non-singular boundary integral method and Fourier transform.

The general space-time evolution of the scattering of an incident acoustic plane wave pulse by an arbitrary configuration of targets is treated by employing a recently developed non-singular boundary integral method to solve the Helmholtz equation in the frequency domain from which the space-time solution of the wave equation is obtained using the fast Fourier transform. The non-singular boundary integral solution can enforce the radiation boundary condition at infinity exactly and can account for multiple scattering effects at all spacings between scatterers without adverse effects on the numerical precision. More generally, the absence of singular kernels in the non-singular integral equation confers high numerical stability and precision for smaller numbers of degrees of freedom. The use of fast Fourier transform to obtain the time dependence is not constrained to discrete time steps and is particularly efficient for studying the response to different incident pulses by the same configuration of scatterers. The precision that can be attained using a smaller number of Fourier components is also quantified.

Leidenfrost Vapor Layers Reduce Drag without the Crisis in High Viscosity Liquids.

The drag coefficient C_{D} of a solid smooth sphere moving in a fluid is known to be only a function of the Reynolds number Re and diminishes rapidly at the drag crisis around Re∼3×10^{5}. A Leidenfrost vapor layer on a hot sphere surface can trigger the onset of the drag crisis at a lower Re. By using a range of high viscosity perfluorocarbon liquids, we show that the drag reduction effect can occur over a wide range of Re, from as low as ∼600 to 10^{5}. The Navier slip model with a viscosity dependent slip length can fit the observed drag reduction and wake shape.

Anomalous Sinking of Spheres due to Local Fluidization of Apparently Fixed Powder Beds.

The sinking of an intruder sphere into a powder bed in the apparently fixed bed regime exhibits complex behavior in the sinking rate and the final depth when the sphere density is close to the powder bed density. Evidence is adduced that the intruder sphere locally fluidizes the apparently fixed powder bed, allowing the formation of voids and percolation bubbles that facilitates spheres to sink slower but deeper than expected. By adjusting the air injection rate and the sphere-to-powder bed density ratio, this phenomenon provides the basis of a sensitive large particle separation mechanism.

The impact and bounce of air bubbles at a flat fluid interface.

The rise and impact of bubbles at an initially flat but deformable liquid-air interface in ultraclean liquid systems are modelled by taking into account the buoyancy force, hydrodynamic drag, inertial added mass effect and drainage of the thin film between the bubble and the interface. The bubble-surface interaction is analyzed using lubrication theory that allows for both bubble and surface deformation under a balance of normal stresses and surface tension as well as the long-range nature of deformation along the interface. The quantitative result for collision and bounce is sensitive to the impact velocity of the rising bubble. This velocity is controlled by the combined effects of interfacial tension via the Young-Laplace equation and hydrodynamic stress on the surface, which determine the deformation of the bubble. The drag force that arises from the hydrodynamic stress in turn depends on the hydrodynamic boundary conditions on the bubble surface and its shape. These interrelated factors are accounted for in a consistent manner. The model can predict the rise velocity and shape of millimeter-size bubbles in ultra-clean water, in two silicone oils of different densities and viscosities and in ethanol without any adjustable parameters. The collision and bounce of such bubbles with a flat water/air, silicone oil/air and ethanol/air interface can then be predicted with excellent agreement when compared to experimental observations.

A robust and accurate formulation of molecular and colloidal electrostatics.

This paper presents a re-formulation of the boundary integral method for the Debye-Hückel model of molecular and colloidal electrostatics that removes the mathematical singularities that have to date been accepted as an intrinsic part of the conventional boundary integral equation method. The essence of the present boundary regularized integral equation formulation consists of subtracting a known solution from the conventional boundary integral method in such a way as to cancel out the singularities associated with the Green's function. This approach better reflects the non-singular physical behavior of the systems on boundaries with the benefits of the following: (i) the surface integrals can be evaluated accurately using quadrature without any need to devise special numerical integration procedures, (ii) being able to use quadratic or spline function surface elements to represent the surface more accurately and the variation of the functions within each element is represented to a consistent level of precision by appropriate interpolation functions, (iii) being able to calculate electric fields, even at boundaries, accurately and directly from the potential without having to solve hypersingular integral equations and this imparts high precision in calculating the Maxwell stress tensor and consequently, intermolecular or colloidal forces, (iv) a reliable way to handle geometric configurations in which different parts of the boundary can be very close together without being affected by numerical instabilities, therefore potentials, fields, and forces between surfaces can be found accurately at surface separations down to near contact, and (v) having the simplicity of a formulation that does not require complex algorithms to handle singularities will result in significant savings in coding effort and in the reduction of opportunities for coding errors. These advantages are illustrated using examples drawn from molecular and colloidal electrostatics.

Drag Moderation by the Melting of an Ice Surface in Contact with Water.

We report measurements of the effects of a melting ice surface on the hydrodynamic drag of ice-shell-metal-core spheres free falling in water at a Reynolds of number Re~2×10^{4}-3×10^{5} and demonstrate that the melting surface induces the early onset of the drag crisis, thus reducing the hydrodynamic drag by more than 50%. Direct visualization of the flow pattern demonstrates the key role of surface melting. Our observations support the hypothesis that the drag reduction is due to the disturbance of the viscous boundary layer by the mass transfer from the melting ice surface.

Electric Double-Layer Interaction between Dissimilar Charge-Conserved Conducting Plates.

Small metallic particles used in forming nanostructured to impart novel optical, catalytic, or tribo-rheological can be modeled as conducting particles with equipotential surfaces that carry a net surface charge. The value of the surface potential will vary with the separation between interacting particles, and in the absence of charge-transfer or electrochemical reactions across the particle surface, the total charge of each particle must also remain constant. These two physical conditions require the electrostatic boundary condition for metallic nanoparticles to satisfy an equipotential whole-of-particle charge conservation constraint that has not been studied previously. This constraint gives rise to a global charge conserved constant potential boundary condition that results in multibody effects in the electric double-layer interaction that are either absent or are very small in the familiar constant potential or constant charge or surface electrochemical equilibrium condition.

Force Balance Model for Bubble Rise, Impact, and Bounce from Solid Surfaces.

A force balance model for the rise and impact of air bubbles in a liquid against rigid horizontal surfaces that takes into account effects of buoyancy and hydrodynamic drag forces, bubble deformation, inertia of the fluid via an added mass force, and a film force between the bubble and the rigid surface is proposed. Numerical solution of the governing equations for the position and velocity of the center of mass of the bubbles is compared against experimental data taken with ultraclean water. The boundary condition at the air-water interface is taken to be stress free, which is consistent for bubbles in clean water systems. Features that are compared include bubble terminal velocity, bubbles accelerating from rest to terminal speed, and bubbles impacting and bouncing off different solid surfaces for bubbles that have already or are yet to attain terminal speed. Excellent agreement between theory and experiments indicates that the forces included in the model constitute the main physical ingredients to describe the bouncing phenomenon.

Universal behavior of the initial stage of drop impact.

During the early stages of the impact of a drop on a solid surface, pressure builds up in the intervening thin lubricating air layer and deforms the drop. The extent of the characteristic deformation is determined by the competition between capillary, gravitational, and inertial forces that has been encapsulated in a simple analytic scaling law. For millimetric drops, variations of the observed deformation with impact velocity V exhibit a maximum defined by the Weber and Eötvös numbers: We=1+Eo. The deformation scales as V(1/2) at the low-velocity capillary regime and as V(-1/2) at the high-velocity inertia regime, in excellent agreement with a variety of experimental systems.

Compound pendant drop tensiometry for interfacial tension measurement at zero bond number.

A widely used method to determine the interfacial tension between fluids is to quantify the pendant drop shape that is determined by gravity and interfacial tension forces. Failure of this method for small drops or small fluid density differences is a critical limitation in microfluidic applications and when only small fluid samples are available. By adding a small spherical particle to the interface to apply an axisymmetric deformation, both the particle density and the interfacial tension can be simultaneously and precisely determined, providing an accurate and elegant solution to a long-standing problem.

Stabilization of thin liquid films by repulsive van der Waals force.

Using high-speed video recording of bubble rise experiments, we study the stability of thin liquid films trapped between a rising bubble and a surfactant-free liquid-liquid meniscus interface. Using different combinations of nonpolar oils and water that are all immiscible, we investigate the extent to which film stability can be predicted by attractive and repulsive van der Waals (vdW) interactions that are indicated by the relative magnitude of the refractive indices of the liquid combinations, for example, water (refractive index, n = 1.33), perfluorohexane (n = 1.23), and tetradecane (n = 1.43). We show that, when the film-forming phase was oil (perfluorohexane or tetradecane), the stability of the film could always be predicted from the sign of the vdW interaction, with a repulsive vdW force resulting in a stable film and an attractive vdW force resulting in film rupture. However, if aqueous electrolyte is the film-forming bulk phase between the rising air bubble and the upper oil phase, the film always ruptured, even when a repulsive vdW interaction was predicted. We interpret these results as supporting the hypothesis that a short-ranged hydrophobic attraction determines the stability of the thin water film formed between an air phase and a nonpolar oil phase.

Leidenfrost vapour layer moderation of the drag crisis and trajectories of superhydrophobic and hydrophilic spheres falling in water.

We investigate the dynamic effects of a Leidenfrost vapour layer sustained on the surface of heated steel spheres during free fall in water. We find that a stable vapour layer sustained on the textured superhydrophobic surface of spheres falling through 95 °C water can reduce the hydrodynamic drag by up to 75% and stabilize the sphere trajectory for the Reynolds number between 10(4) and 10(6), spanning the drag crisis in the absence of the vapour layer. For hydrophilic spheres under the same conditions, the transition to drag reduction and trajectory stability occurs abruptly at a temperature different from the static Leidenfrost point. The observed drag reduction effects are attributed to the disruption of the viscous boundary layer by the vapour layer whose thickness depends on the water temperature. Both the drag reduction and the trajectory stabilization effects are expected to have significant implications for development of sustainable vapour layer based technologies.

Evaporation of a capillary bridge between a particle and a surface.

The liquid bridge that forms between a particle and a flat surface, and the dynamics of its evaporation are pertinent to a range of physical processes including paint and ink deposition, spray drying, evaporative lithography and the flow and processing of powders. Here, using time-lapse photography, we investigate the evaporative dynamics of a sessile liquid bridge between a particle and a planar substrate. Different wetting characteristics of the particle and substrate are explored, as well as the effects of contact line pinning and stick-slip boundary conditions. A theoretical framework is developed to quantify and analyse the experimental observations. For the size range of particles and drops used in this study, gravity is by far the smallest force in the system when compared to the surface tension and capillary interactions that are present, but in certain circumstances it dictates the key evolution stages of the geometry of the particle-drop-substrate systems. Analysis of evaporation dynamics and capillary forces indicate that at low Bond numbers, surface tension forces dominate and provide unique opportunities for the control of particles on surfaces.