CIMU - Home

Welcome

The Center for Industrial and Medical Ultrasound (CIMU) is a world-class leader in ultrasound research and development.

Our talented multidisciplinary staff of physicists, mathematicians, engineers, technicians, and students works with a wide variety of researchers and medical professionals around the world to advance the expansion of the field.

CIMU staff (click image for enlargement)

These relationships are enhanced by many industry partnerships and help to foster CIMU's mission of research collaboration, development and commercialization of technology, and training and education of students and professionals.

Mission

Foster research collaborations between UW faculty and their industrial partners on industrial and medical ultrasound projects
Develop industrial and medical ultrasound technology, including instruments, techniques, ideas and products that have value to our society
Form partnerships with industry that enable this technology to be transferred to the commercial sector
Educate and train students and technical professionals working in the fields of industrial and medical ultrasound

Expertise

High intensity focused ultrasound
Acoustic hemostasis
Extracorporeal shockwave lithotripsy
Nonlinear acoustics
Sonoluminescence

Tom Matula, Director

What's New?

SonoMotion: A budding start-up company to transition advanced research to an approved ultrasound-based system that treats kidney stone disease in hospitals and clinics around the world. More >>

CIMU is imaging high-speed oscillating micro-bubbles in small blood vessels and observing how the bubble oscillations might help induce permeation, allowing drugs to be transported across that barrier and significantly improve uptake. More >>

Ultrasound's completely non-invasive, which means you can do all the localization without ever having to open up the body. In this video, see how our research is helping to making it a reality. More >>

The ultrasound-based Washington Molecular Imaging and Therapy center, or uWAMIT, focuses on the discovery, development, translation, and commercialization of molecular imaging and therapy technologies. More >>

In the News

Molecular imaging and therapy center to develop, commercialize technologies

UW Today, Hannah Hickey

1 Nov 2010

Ultrasound, best known by many for snapping pictures of babies before they are born, could soon be a way to spot cancerous cells before a tumor develops, precisely monitor how a person responds to treatment, or deliver genetic therapies to their targets.

Washington Life Sciences Discovery Fund Awards $15M

Puget Sound Business Journal

7 Apr 2010

Tom Matula was awarded $5M by the fund to develop, translate, and commercialize new ultrasound techniques for molecular imaging and therapy.

Recent Papers

Harper, J.D., M.D. Sorensen, B.W. Cunitz, Y.-N. Wang, J.C. Simon, F. Starr, M. Paun, B. Dunmire, H.D. Liggitt, A.P. Evan, J.A. McAteer, R.S. Hsi, and M.R. Bailey, "Focused ultrasound to expel calculi from the kidney: Safety and efficacy of a clinical prototype device," J. Urol., EOR, doi:10.1016/j.juro.2013.03.120, 2013.

9 Apr 2013, Link

Lu, W., O.A. Sapozhnikov, M.R. Bailey, P.J. Kaczkowski, and L.A. Crum, "Evidence for trapped surface bubbles as the cause for the twinkling artifact in ultrasound imaging," Ultrasound Med. Biol., EOR, doi:10.1016/j.ultrasmedbio.2013.01.011, 2013.

3 Apr 2013, Link

Pillonetto, G., B.M. Bell, and S. Del Favero, "Distributed Kalman smoothing in static Bayesian networks," Automatica, 49, 1001-1011, doi:10.1016/j.automatica.2013.01.016, 2013.

1 Apr 2013, Link

Educational Opportunities

Graduate and undergraduate students who wish to study ultrasound technology and science at the Applied Physics Laboratory work with CIMU advisors who have joint appointments in UW academic departments. More >>