Abolishing frontiers between fundamental science and medicine : building on the potential of biomedical ultrasound

Breaking down the barriers of ultrasound: an unprecedented look at the human bod

«Conventional Ultrasound (also called sonography), enables us to see inside the body, the same way we see the world through our eyes, with approximately the same resolution and frame rate. That’s why we call it the television of the human body, he explains. In the last twenty years I developed with my colleagues technologies such as ultrafast Ultrasound, neurofunctional ultrasound and ultrasound microscopy that drastically pushes back the spatio-temporal frontiers of ultrasound. Now we can see 10 000 images per second at micrometric resolution, and detect subtle changes in tiny vessels». Seeing inside the body at such microscopic scale has major implications for biomedical research. «To give you an example, this technology enables us to see very small blood vessels, which were invisible before, the researcher explains. A disease, before it reaches the bigger blood vessels, starts in these capillaries. If we can see changes we were not able to see before, we can understand fundamentals of the human body, and we can also establish earlier diagnosis of major diseases. It also enable us to image brain neuronal activity with portable ultrasound devices, a revolution for neuroscience». The biomedical ultrasound technologies developed by prof. Tanter’s team also have therapeutic applications: «Ultrasound can be used for non-invasive surgical purposes as well. For instance, we’ve developed a technique that can restore the elasticity of cardiac valves in elderly people, which is a far less risky intervention than surgery».

The framework of the AXA-INSERM Chair will not only facilitate the research aspects of the program, it will also ensure the outputs find their way to the medical field. Diffusion will be ensured by giving access to the technologies to collaborators of other areas, providing user trainings, answering users’ needs and feedbacks, and training students and young researchers to work at the interface between fundamental physics, applied physics and translational research.

Learn more about Prof. Tanter's research project

Functional Ultrasound Microscopy: Sensing the Whole Brain Neuronal Activity at the Micron Scale