Professor Hiroshi KANAI, Ph.D.

Tohoku University
Graduate School of Engineering
Department of Electronic Engineering
Sendai 980-8579,
Japan
e-mail:
facsimile: +81-22-263-9444
 
 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hiroshi Kanai was born in Matsumoto, Japan, on November 29, 1958. He received a B.E. degree from Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan in 1981, and M.E. and the Ph. D. degrees, also from Tohoku University, in 1983 and in 1986, both in Electrical Engineering.

From 1986 to 1988 he was with the Education Center for Information Processing, Tohoku University, as a research associate. From 1990 to 1992 he was a lecturer in the Department of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Tohoku University. From 1992 to 2001 he was an associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Tohoku University. Since 2001 he has been a full professor in the Department of Electronic Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Tohoku University. His present interest is in ultrasonic measurement and digital signal processing for diagnosis of heart diseases and arteriosclerosis.

Dr. Kanai is a member of the Acoustical Society of Japan, the Institute of Electronics Information and Communication Engineering of Japan, the Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers, the Japan Society of Ultrasonics in Medicine, Japan Society of Medical Electronics and Biological Engineering, the Japanese Circulation Society, and the Japanese College of Cardiology.

Dr. Kanai is an editor of the Journal of Medical Ultrasonics, an editor of the Journal of the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers, an editor of the Journal of the Acoustical Society of Japan, and Director in Charge of Scientific Meetings of the Acoustical Society of Japan.
 

• Transcutaneous Measurement and Spectrum Analysis of Heart Wall Vibrations
• Noninvasive Evaluation of Local Myocardial Thickening and Its Color-Coded Imaging
• Noninvasive Measurement of Left Ventricular End-Diastolic Pressure and Myocardial Elasticity by Analysis of Small Vibration on Heart Wall
• Cross-Sectional Imaging of Elasticity around Atherosclerotic Plaque with Transcutaneous Ultrasound
• In vivo measurement of local pulse wave velocity on arterial wall by detecting and analysing small vibrations for diagnosis of atherosclerosis

Dr. Hideyuki Hasegawa, Associate Professor

Tohoku University
Graduate School of Engineering
Department of Electronic Engineering
Sendai 980-8579,
Japan
e-mail:
facsimile: +81-22-263-9230
 
 

EDUCATIONAL AND WORK BACKGROUND:

B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering, 1996, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan.
M.S. degree in Electronic Engineering, 1998, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan.
"A Study on Noninvasive Evaluation of Elasticity of Arterial Wall by Measuring Its Small Vibration Using Ultrasound"
Ph.D. degree in Electronic Engineering, 2001, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan.
"Study on Ultrasonic Noninvasive Measurement of Regional Elasticity of Arterial Wall for Diagnosis of Atherosclerosis"
From 2002 to 2005 he was a Research Associate, from 2005 to 2006 he was a Lecturer, scince 2007, has been an associate professor in the Department of Electronic Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan.

• Diagnosis of Atherosclerosis by Evaluating the Elasticity of the Arterial Wall
1. Improvement of Accuracy and Robustness to Noise in Measurement of Small Change in Thickness of Arterial Wall
2. Evaluation of (Spatial Distribution of) Elasticity of Arterial Wall
3. Boundary Detection in Ultrasonic Artery Images for Automatic Measurement of Arterial Elasticity
Recently, changes into American and European style of dietary life and an aging society make large numbers of people having trouble with cardiovascular system such as myocardial infarction and cerebral infarction.  Therefore, it is important to have an early diagnosis of atherosclerosis which is the main cause for the troubles above.  One of our purposes to this study is to diagnose atherosclerosis at an early stage by noninvasive evaluation of the changes of elasticity of arterial wall because the tissue component of arterial wall degenerates with atherosclerosis, and  the elasticity of the arterial wall is supposed to reflect this degeneration.  Also advancing atherosclerosis, phymatic lesion called "atherosclerotic plaque" accrue inside of blood vessel.  It has many kinds of forms and properties, but generally it contains soft lipid, covered with fibrous tissue.  If the lipid in atherosclerotic plaque increases, caused by high cholesterol in blood, it is said that the plaque will be easy to rupture.  If the plaque ruptures, artery will be occluded by lipid of content into blood vessel and formation of thrombus at the part where plaque ruptured, and this will be a direct cause of myocardial infarction and cerebral infarction.  Another purpose of this study is to diagnose atherosclerotic plaque which is to see whether it is  easy to rupture by evaluating elasticity of it.  To do this, it is necessary to evaluate the distribution of the elasticity of the arterial wall which is measured at each local region within 1 mm.  In our method, the elasticity of arterial wall is noninvasively evaluated by measuring small changes in thickness(<100 micrometers) of arterial wall.  In our group, improvement of precision and accuracy in measurement of the change in thickness is studied in terms of various points of view such as estimation algorithm, condition in measurement, etc. because it is not easy to measure the change in thickness of the arterial wall due to its small amplitude of less than 100 micrometers.  In addition, we evaluate our methods, developed by such investigations, in various experiments.

RECENT PUBLICATIONS:

1. Hideyuki Hasegawa, Hiroshi Kanai, Nozomu Hoshimiya, and Yoshiro Koiwa: "Reduction of the influence of the change in S/N of the ultrasonic pulse during cardiac cycles in  measurement of small change in the thickness of the arterial wall," IEEE 1999 International Ultrasonics Symposium Proceedings, pp. 1337-1340 (1999) .
2. Hideyuki Hasegawa, Hiroshi Kanai, Nozomu Hoshimiya, and Yoshiro Koiwa: "A method for evaluation of regional elasticity of the arterial wall with non-uniform wall thickness by measurement of its change in thickness during an entire heartbeat," IEEE 2000 International Ultrasonics Symposium Proceedings(2000)(in press).
3. Hideyuki Hasegawa, Hiroshi Kanai, Nozomu Hoshimiya, and Yoshiro Koiwa: "Reduction of Influence of Decrease in Signal-to-Noise Ratio in Measurement of Change in Thickness of Arterial Wall due to Heartbeat," Japanese Journal of Applied Physics, Vol. 39, No. 5B, pp. 3257-3261(2000).
4. Hideyuki Hasegawa, Hiroshi Kanai, Nozomu Hoshimiya, and Yoshiro Koiwa: "Evaluation of Regional Elastic Modulus of Cylindrical Shell with Nonuniform Wall Thickness," Japanese Journal of Medical Ultrasonics, Vol. 28, No. 1, pp. 3-13 (2001).

Dr. Tomohiro Fukui, Assistant Professor

Tohoku University
Graduate School of Engineering
Department of Electronic Engineering
Sendai 980-8579,
Japan
e-mail:
facsimile: +81-22-263-9230
 
 

EDUCATIONAL AND WORK BACKGROUND:

HIS RESEARCH FIELDS

RECENT PUBLICATIONS: