Medical Ultrasound

The Office of Naval Research, Warfighter Performance S&T Department, Warfighter Protection & Application Division, is conducting a market survey to determine industry capabilities in providing enhancements to medical ultrasound technology. There is also interest in training modules for medical ultrasound usage, especially with focus on applications in trauma care. Medical ultrasound is the primary imaging capability operated by expeditionary naval medical personnel (corpsmen, nurses, physicians) who operate primarily at Role 1 & 2 medical treatment facilities (e.g., Shock Trauma Platoons, Forward Resuscitative Surgical Systems or Expeditionary Resuscitative Surgical Systems). Firms should also provide business size information. ONR interest is for a portable 3D/4D ultrasound (US) device for abdominal Focused Assessment with Sonography in Trauma (FAST), vascular, and cardiac exams. ONR has additional interest in enhancements to US to provide transcranial imaging for the detection and monitoring of traumatic brain injuries, including detection of foreign bodies (bullets/shrapnel/bone fragments), injury related vascular abnormalities (stenoses/aneurysms/bleeding), severe edema (anatomically distorting and/or indicative of increased intracranial pressure); improved sensitivity in assessing penetrating eye trauma and localization of foreign bodies in soft tissues (to include any materials that might be driven into tissue exposed to violent explosions: shrapnel, bone, clothing, debris); means to identify site of internal bleeding (arterial as well as low flow venous bleeding); and presence of chest/lung injuries (eg. pneumo/hemothorax, parenchymal consolidation, vascular/airway injuries). In addition, development of medical ultrasound usage training modules is desired. These may take the form of electronic (computer-based) training modules appropriate for both local and distributed training. The training modules could range from traditional classroom-based, instructor/expert taught lessons to distributed training modules appropriate for use in non-classroom, remote locations without necessitating onsite instructor/expert and use of animal/human examination subjects. Inclusion of remote or tele-teaching methods is not necessary but is of interest. Training modules should allow staged learning with progressive complexity and difficulty of interpretation. Methods to estimate or measure success of training including transference of skills from training module to clinical application will be desired. Training modules are desired for the following topics: Vascular imaging, including detection and estimation of severity/rate of internal bleeding (intracranial/thorax/abdomen) Pneumo/Hemothorax/other lung injury (airway/vasculature/perfusates) recognition Focused Assessment with Sonography in Trauma (Fast Exam) (including pericardial) Foreign body in eyes (e.g., fragments from explosions) Foreign body in soft tissues Bone fracture recognition Detection of ectopic pregnancies and introduction to gyn/obs examinations