Faculty & Staff

Featured Faculty: Tim Bigelow

Moving Ultrasound Beyond Images 

A grainy, black-and-white ultrasound image can show an expectant mother the first glimpse of her baby. And while the picture is not entirely comprehensible, it provides physicians with a great deal of information about the health of the child.

Now imagine a more sophisticated form of this technology used on the same woman, one that instead can determine if a mass in her breast is cancerous. Advances in ultrasound such as this are at the heart of Tim Bigelow’s research.

Bigelow, an assistant professor in both the electrical and computer engineering and mechanical engineering departments, came to Iowa State in August 2008 from the University of North Dakota, where his investigation into ultrasound had accelerated to the point where, by January 2007, he received a prestigious National Science Foundation CAREER Award to develop a system to use ultrasound to treat cancer.

He joins a 75-year exploration of ultrasound energy in the medical field, engaging both past uses of the technology, which included treatment for ailments such as brain disorders, as well as the medical imaging that is seen today during prenatal care. Using an integrated approach, Bigelow’s work seeks to make some medical practices more efficient while providing immense benefits to patients.

A measurable improvement
The diagnostic use of ultrasound comes with some imperfections, primarily because it requires a skilled technician to read the image and make judgments based on qualitative attributes. However, incorporating mathematical analysis into the process, as Bigelow strives to do, provides new details to health care providers.

Working with a faculty member in nursing at the University of Illinois, Chicago, Bigelow analyzes the echoes from an expectant mother’s cervix to assess the risk of premature delivery. The team identifies risk indicators, such as an increase in water concentration in the cervix’s lining, by placing a color map derived from mathematical analysis over a gray-scale ultrasound image of the cervix. With this information, they are able to determine if the mother needs to take any action to protect herself and her child.

Faculty members at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, are spearheading another project in which Bigelow is involved, work that could eliminate the need for a biopsy to diagnose breast cancer and instead offer patients a less painful and less expensive mechanism for assessing their health. “Reading the echoes from an ultrasound, a physician can determine if a tumor is cancerous without removing any cells or tissue,” Bigelow explains.

A precise treatment
At significantly greater amplitudes, ultrasound can be used for therapeutic purposes as well, offering physicians more control than is typical with most current procedures. Within this research avenue, Bigelow is identifying ways to remove infection from an implant and treat metastatic cancer of the liver.

Common cancer treatments such as thermal ablation can destroy healthy tissue by heating up an entire area to attack a tumor, and surgery often removes good tissue along with cancerous tissue. By contrast, ultrasound can provide a less invasive process that allows patients to recover more quickly and with fewer side effects.

Ultrasound essentially liquefies cancerous tissue as the amplitudes interact with small bodies of gas in the tumor. This reaction causes the gas bodies to expand and collapse violently, Bigelow says, during which cells exposed to the ultrasound are completely fragmented, a process he likens to sending them through a microscopic blender.

With ultrasound offering vast improvements in patient care, Bigelow and his multidisciplinary collaborators are keen to continue their biomedical research.

“While we still have many challenges,” he says, “the potential of our work keeps our ambitions high.”