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Updated: Jan 23, 2026

Author Spotlight: Enhancing Success of Ultrasound-Guided Neuraxial Anesthesia in Cases with Difficult Anatomy
Published on: January 31, 2025
Phantom experiment for thoracic spine gap delineation using steering-transmitted ultrasound to assist epidural
Yusuke Soejima1, Eiko Onishi2, Masanori Yamauchi2
1Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering, Tohoku University, 6-6-05 Aoba, Aramaki, Aoba-Ku, Sendai, Miyagi, 980-8579, Japan.
Purpose:
Epidural anesthesia under real-time ultrasound guidance has been studied to enhance puncture safety. However, in the thoracic spine, where the anatomy is complex and the interlaminar space is narrow, improved image quality is necessary. Because imaging quality is degraded in bones that are greatly tilted relative to the probe, we aimed to improve the imaging quality by steering the transmitted ultrasonic beam.
Methods:
We investigated a method to improve bone visibility by selecting appropriate transmit steering angles and receiving aperture ranges for each of the two bones forming the interlaminar space, and by compensating for the directivity of the receiving elements.
Results:
The proposed method emphasized the delineation of a bone phantom near the gap corresponding to the puncture site. Furthermore, when comparing the contrast ratio in the region of interest of the bone and gap areas, the proposed method showed an improvement of 24.2 dB on the left side and 4.2 dB on the right side compared to the conventional B-mode image.
Conclusion:
The proposed method was confirmed to emphasize the bones and is expected to improve the image quality of the thoracic spine gap.
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