Small Business Innovation Research Program Provides Seed Funding for R&D
 
Santa Clara, CA October 25, 2019 – Cephasonics Ultrasound is proud to announce that it has been awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant for $225,000 to conduct research and development (R&D) toward developing a new computational architecture for AI-enabled Ultrafast Frameforming ultrasound systems (UFFFI).

UFFFI is a highly effective approach to imaging and measuring conditions in the human body.  However, its commercial procedure-specific usage has been impeded by the data and computational requirements for real-time processing.  

This research will address the computational challenges of real-time UFFFI, with the objective of creating a new computational design for an ultrasound engine able to process medical-grade image data at high frequency, enable new machine learning algorithms and support real-time clinical applications of UFFFI that can recognize, quantify and characterize structures in the body in real-time.

 “NSF is proud to support the technology of the future by thinking beyond incremental developments and funding the most creative, impactful ideas across all markets and areas of science and engineering,” said Andrea Belz, Division Director of the Division of Industrial Innovation and Partnerships at NSF. “With the support of our research funds, any deep technology startup or small business can guide basic science into meaningful solutions that address tremendous needs.”

“We believe that by overcoming the computational challenges of UFFFI, this research will help open a new range of ultrasound applications and products that access more precise data, which will provide surgeons and doctors real time information to enhance clinical diagnosis and outcomes’” said Richard Tobias, CEO of Cephasonics.
Once a small business is awarded a Phase I SBIR/STTR grant (up to $225,000), it becomes eligible to apply for a Phase II grant (up to $750,000). Small businesses with Phase II grants are eligible to receive up to $500,000 in additional matching funds with qualifying third-party investment or sales.

NSF accepts Phase I proposals from small businesses year-round. Small businesses with innovative science and technology solutions, and commercial potential are encouraged to apply. All proposals submitted to the NSF SBIR/STTR program, also known as America’s Seed Fund powered by NSF, undergo a rigorous merit-based review process.

To learn more about America’s Seed Fund powered by NSF, visit: https://seedfund.nsf.gov/

About the National Science Foundation's Small Business Programs: America’s Seed Fund powered by NSF awards $200 million annually to startups and small businesses, transforming scientific discovery into products and services with commercial and societal impact. Startups working across almost all areas of science and technology can receive up to $1.5 million in non-dilutive funds to support research and development (R&D), helping de-risk technology for commercial success. America’s Seed Fund is congressionally mandated through the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. The NSF is an independent federal agency with a budget of about $8.1 billion that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering.

About Cephasonics: Cephasonics is a worldwide supplier of precision real-time ultrasound systems for research, product development and embedded OEM applications.   Cephasonics enables next-generation ultrasound research and development as well as enabling companies to create and commercialize new medical ultrasound imaging solutions. 

The Cephasonics open architecture and flexible embedded-ultrasound platform is compact, scalable to 4096 channels, and provides unique access to comprehensive scanning data for AI applications. They also provide open development tools that empower customers to quickly create and commercialize innovative new procedure-specific ultrasound applications and products that can locate, recognize, quantify and characterize structures in the body providing doctors real-time information during medical procedures.

For more information, please contact:Randy Whiting
(408) 772-2428
[email protected]

For more information on Cephasonics:  www.cephasonics.com

We're very excited about the opportunity to work with Lambda Labs related to using their AI workstations combined with the Cephasonics Ultrasound engines.

Lambda Labs is probably the best known producer of high-end AI workstations in the market.  We're working with them to help them move into the healthcare market and at the same time be able to provide our customers a wide range of proven high-performance servers specially built for AI applications.  Their performance and use of Nvidia GPUs make the Lambda Labs workstations a perfect server choice for a variety of ultrasound applications built on the Cephasonics platform.

These new Cephasonics elastography systems provide the ability to execute a variety of ultrasound modalities such as beam forming, ultrafast imaging and shear wave elastography. The system uses a single ultrasound transducer to both generate acoustic radiation force in tissue and image the tissue displacement response.  The systems include Push Burst that can generate 4 pulses per second or up to 50,000 cycles per second with a single pulse, support for 100 volts peak to peak and the ability to track and collect up to 32KHz PRF with interleaved mode and up to 10KHz PRF for non-interleaved mode.  The systems also provide direct access to raw data for precision measurements, generating motion data as well as for use in AI applications.

Cephasonics also offers a unique dual-system configuration which enables simultaneous push/imaging with 2 probes. This configuration features a probe connected to a Cephasonics push system that is paired with a second Cephasonics imaging system with the second probe.

We recently entered into relationship with BBS Medical AB from Sweden to develop and market specialized ultrasound probe/transducer adapters that allow users of Cephasonics systems to connect a variety of different probes from other companies to the Cephasonics system.  As part of the relationship, BBS Medical will develop and market the adapters both directly as well as through Cephasonics. 
 
These new adapters will support probes initially from Ultrasonix and overtime a growing number of other probes from other major ultrasound companies to be directly connected to the Cephasonics system without any rewiring or modifications.  This will give our users and developers a much greater array of ultrasound probes that can be used in research and development with the Cephasonics ultrasound engine.  We’re very excited to work with BBS Medical and the ProbeHunter team to expand the ability of our platform to work with popular ultrasound probes.”
 
About BBS Medical AB
 
BBS Medical AB specializes in developing real-time test systems to verify the performance of ultrasound probes, Their ProbeHunter probe testing system currently offers approximately 50 different adapters to test all leading brands of ultrasound probes including GE, Philips, Siemens, Samsung, and Toshiba/Canon.  The BBS Medical ProbeHunter team supports various University ultrasound research programs to enable researchers to quickly and easily verify the performance of their ultrasound probes continuously for their studies. To be verified as an approved supplier for adapters to Cephasonics ultrasound research platform confirms that their work meets the high standards within the ultrasound research industry as ultrasonic experts.

Santa Clara, CA September 16, 2018 — Cephasonics today announced that it has selected the Nvidia Clara and Xavier framework to power their next generation architecture for Ultrasound AI & deep learning. AI and deep learning will have a dramatic impact not only on the quality of ultrasound imaging, but also on the ability to utilize ultrasound in innovative ways. AI and deep learning will enable ultrasound product developers and researchers to create new high-value imaging applications, where the computer can, not only display an ultrasound image, but also recognize, interpret, measure and act on the image data.

However, AI and deep learning applications present unique hardware and software demands. To deal with these unique requirements, and effectively implement AI and deep learning, Cephasonics is building on the proven AI capabilities of the Nvidia technology.  This will result in optimizing Cephasonics ultrasound systems for deep learning capabilities that can be easily accessed and utilized by ultrasound application developers. The result will be that medical technology companies creating new products based on Cephasonics platform will be able to quickly access the power of AI and deep learning in their products. 

At the heart of NVIDIA’s platform is Clara AGX -- a revolutionary computing architecture based on the NVIDIA Xavier AI computing module and NVIDIA Turing GPUs -- and the Clara software development kit, which helps developers create a wide range of AI-powered applications for processing data from existing imaging systems. Richard Tobias, CEO of Cephasonics, stated that “We are extremely excited about working with Nvidia and their Clara platform.  Nvidia’s AI and Deep Learning technologies with Clara AGX will dramatically expand our AI capabilities and open many new and exciting opportunities in how ultrasound imaging in exciting new applications from surgery to diagnostics and treatment.”

Collaborative AI Ultrasound Research Initiative

In addition to announcing their commitment to the Nvidia Clara AGX platform, Cephasonics also announced the launch of a collaborative AI in Ultrasound research initiative that will work on identifying high-priority AI functions, approaches and data models as well as new hardware architectures optimized for AI. A key objective of the initiative is to expand the overall understanding of the role of AI in ultrasound imaging and define key requirements to support deep learning and AI in ultrasound. The collaboration will focus on integrating Cephasonics’ ultrasound technologies along with key Cephasonics’ partner and customer ultrasound applications on NVIDIA’s Clara platform. 

University research programs interested in expanding AI applications in ultrasound, as well as companies interested in developing next-generation ultrasound applications that utilize AI based on the Cephasonics ultrasound platform, are invited to participate.   

About Cephasonics
Cephasonics is a worldwide supplier of state of the art ultrasound platforms as well as custom design and engineering services. Cephasonics provides AI-enabled hardware and software ultrasound imaging systems for ultrasound research and development as well as for companies to create and commercialize new ultrasound imaging solutions for medical and industrial applications. Its products include high-performance ultrasound platforms scalable from 64 to 4096 channels, comprehensive ultrasound software development kits and customer engineering and design services. More information on Cephasonics can be found at www.cephasonics.com.

For more information, please contact:

Randy Whiting
[email protected]
1-800-510-4561

Cephasonics, a leader in ultrasound technology and systems, has announced that it has joined the NVIDIA Inception program, which nurtures companies revolutionizing industries with advancements in AI and data sciences.

Cephasonics is developing new AI-driven capabilities for its ultrasound platform and participation in the NVIDIA Inception program will help them use machine learning and deep learning to enhance image quality, improve ease of use and deliver expanded imaging functionality required for both next generation medical and industrial ultrasound applications related to measurement, interpretation, and responsive capabilities. 

According to Cephasonics CEO, Richard Tobias, “ the NVIDIA Inception program will give us access to Nvidia’s extensive AI knowledge and advanced technology and will accelerate our development of new AI-based platforms that will enable our customers to pursue new areas of imaging research and develop exciting new ultrasound products and applications." 

NVIDIA's Inception program is a virtual accelerator application that helps companies during critical stages of product development, prototyping and deployment. Every Inception member gets a custom set of ongoing benefits, from hardware grants and marketing support to training with deep learning experts. 

Santa Clara, CA July 19, 2018 — Cephasonics, a leader in research and OEM ultrasound technology and systems, has announced the launch of a new leasing program.  This is an affordable shorter-term alternative to purchasing for acquiring basic ultrasound research systems and is designed to make it easier to acquire ultrasound systems. 

Lease details:

• Lease available for Cephasonics Cicada LT or LX 64-128 channel systems
• Minimum 6-month term and then you can continue on a month-to-month basis
• At the end of 6 months, you can apply 100% of the lease amount toward purchase of the system. 
• Leave includes hardware and software support
• Optional features for PCiE interfaces and 3:1 muxing also available with the lease
• Utilizes both new and factory refurbished systems
• Currently available only for U.S. delivery

“This new leasing option gives our customers another way to accelerate their R&D efforts by making systems more available with reduced commitments.  This provides our ultrasound system customers with enormous flexibility by having cost effective access to systems without having to make a long term commitment,” said Randy Whiting, VP for worldwide marketing at Cephasonics.

About Cephasonics:
Cephasonics is a worldwide supplier of (made in America) high-performance clinical-quality ultrasound imaging hardware and software platforms as well as custom design and engineering services.  Their scalable ultrasound hardware and software platform (64 to 4096 channels), is designed to support leading-edge ultrasound research as well as enabling development of new commercial ultrasound imaging applications and products.  Cephasonics’ advanced ultrasound technology and services provide a complete solution to develop new imaging solutions faster and at lower cost.

Santa Clara, CA July 15, 2018 — Cephasonics, a leader in ultrasound technology and systems, has updated their Cicada Ultrasound product to increase the competitive positioning of their product line.  The changes to their product line include an aggressively priced entry-level ultrasound system designed for basic ultrasound research, new configuration options and pricing for their expandable 64-256 channel systems as well as a new line of OEM ultrasound systems.
 
Announcing 3 New Product Models
 
Cicada LT – the Cicada LT is the new entry level ultrasound system from Cephasonics.  The LT is based on Cephasonics’ popular Cicada 64-channel ultrasound engine and comes with a basic configuration and software package.  It is designed to offer superior image quality and performance while competing directly with other lower cost ultrasound systems on the market.
 
Cicada LX – The Cicada LX family is a full function ultrasound research and development system that is expandable from 64 to 256 channels and provides some of the best overall image quality, scanning performance and software flexibility in the industry.  The LX family includes the complete Cephasonics software development package which provides superior flexibility and power in creating custom research and clinical imaging applications.
 
Cicada VX – The Cicada VX family are specially configured systems for volume commercial production OEM applications.  The VX systems offer the same basic 64-256 configurations as the Cicada LX.  The VX line also provides a range of customization options to help meet specific larger scale production and design needs.
 
About Cephasonics:
Cephasonics is a (made in America) worldwide supplier of high-performance clinical-quality ultrasound imaging hardware and software platforms for research and OEM applications as well as custom design and engineering services.  Their scalable ultrasound hardware and software platform (64 to 4096 channels), is designed to support leading-edge ultrasound research as well as enabling development of new commercial ultrasound imaging applications and products.  Cephasonics’ advanced ultrasound technology and services provide a complete solution to develop new imaging solutions faster and at lower cost.