Marie Muller, an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at North Carolina State University, and Jonathan Mamou, a professor of electrical engineering in radiology at Weill Cornell Medicine, have been awarded a $2.65 million R01 grant from the National Institutes of Health. Their project, titled “Quantitative Ultrasound for Interstitial Lung Diseases,” aims to develop advanced methods for diagnosing and monitoring lung diseases.
Traditional ultrasound methods are unable to quantitatively evaluate conditions such as pulmonary edema and fibrosis. Muller, the grant’s contact principal investigator, and Mamou seek to create quantitative ultrasound (QUS) techniques to measure pulmonary edema severity in heart failure patients and to monitor their responses to diuretic treatment. They will also explore the potential of these techniques to assess pulmonary fibrosis.
“Currently, expert clinicians rely on visible artifacts in lung ultrasound images to diagnose interstitial lung diseases. However, these artifacts can vary depending on ultrasound imaging settings, and their interpretation is often subjective,” Mamou said. “In collaboration with Dr. Muller, we will move away from imaging altogether, instead using ultrasound data to measure lung-quantitative ultrasound parameters linked to lung microstructure. These parameters are independent of users and systems. We hypothesize that this approach will allow for sensitive and specific diagnoses of interstitial lung diseases.”
Traditionally, conditions like pulmonary edema and fibrosis have been diagnosed using chest X-rays, CT scans, or invasive pulmonary function tests. These methods are not ideal for frequent monitoring due to high costs, exposure to ionizing radiation, and significant inter-observer variability. Pulmonary function tests are effort-dependent and can yield inconsistent results in patients with symptoms like coughing or shortness of breath. This underscores the need for a noninvasive, real-time, point-of-care method that does not expose patients to radiation.
“Ultrasound propagation in the lungs is complex due to the strong scattering properties of air sacs,” Muller said. “In this project, we’ll leverage sophisticated, physics-based approaches to quantify single and multiple scattering events. This will enable us to extract lung-quantitative ultrasound biomarkers that reflect the lung microstructure, particularly air content. These QUS parameters could provide valuable diagnostic insights.”
The work led by Muller and Mamou has the potential to transform the diagnosis and monitoring of interstitial lung diseases, offering a safer, more practical alternative to current diagnostic tools.