Advances in ultrasound biomicroscopy

The visualisation of living tissues at microscopic resolution is attracting attention in several fields. In medicine, the goals are to image healthy a nd diseased tissue with the aim of providing information previously only av ailable from biopsy samples. In basic biology, the goal may be to image bio logical models of human disease or to conduct longitudinal studies of small -animal development. High-frequency ultrasonic imaging (ultrasound biomicro scopy) offers unique advantages for these applications. In this paper, the development of ultrasound biomicroscopy is reviewed. Aspects of transducer development, systems design and tissue properties are presented to provide a foundation for medical and biological applications, The majority of appli cations appear to be developing in the 40-60-MHz frequency range, where res olution on the order of 50 mu m can be achieved. Doppler processing in this frequency range is beginning to emerge and some examples of current achiev ements will be highlighted. The current state of the art is reviewed for me dical: applications in ophthalmology, intravascular ultrasound, dermatology , and cartilage imaging. Ultrasound biomicroscopic studies of mouse embryon ic development and tumour biology are presented. Speculation on the continu ing evolution of ultrasound biomicroscopy will be discussed. (C) 2000 World Federation for UltraSound in Medicine & Biology.