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OCTOBER, 2014

Mathematical Analysis Wires Muscular Dystrophy Care

Professor John Mc.Carthy's analytic techniques for research in Multivariable Operator Theory have successfully been applied to significantly improve the processing of ultrasound imaging. The breakthrough allows for the development of a point-of-care device that could some day help physicians assist muscular dystrophy patients remotely, using smartphones.

Results of the inter-departmental study led by McCarthy (WUSTL Mathematics), Dr. Samuel A. Wickline and Jon N. Marsh (WUSTL School of Medicine, C-TRAIN), and physicist Michael S. Hughes (Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory) showed the response of muscles affected by Muscular Dystrophy to an injected drug, in mice. The results were presented by Michael Hughes to the Acoustical Society of America on October 30, 2014. For more on the presentation to the Acoustical Society of America, read http://www.pnl.gov/news/release.aspx?id=3167 ⇨

Virtually all imaging devices today function by collecting either electromagnetic or acoustic waves and using the energy carried by these waves to determine pixel values in order to build an energy picture. However, waves also carry information, and this can also be used to determine the pixel values in an image. Various studies have shown that these information images often reveal features that are completely missed by conventional, energy images. Mathematicians at WUSTL improve these images, using various measures of information-theoretic entropy, both to render them sharper, and to enable their calculation in real time. Read the work of WUSTL Mathematics Professors Mladen Victor Wickerhauser and John McCarthy on improving signal processing to detect cancer by ultrasonic molecular imaging of targeted nanoparticles (joint with Michael Hughes, Jon N. Marsh, Brian Maurizi, Kirk D. Wallace, Gregory M. Lanza and Samuel A. Wickline) http://scitation.aip.org/content/asa/journal/jasa/129/6/10.1121/1.3578459 ⇨

Enjoyed this story?  See also the October 2014 News stories WUSTL Math Alum Wins Nobel Prize ⇨

— Math news, stories, videos, and interviews by Marie C. Taris, http://www.math.wustl.edu/marietaris/math.html⇨

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