The acoustic trap theory and its application to lung ultrasound

In this lecture, the acoustic trap theory, as first introduced in 2016 in the context of lung ultrasound (DOI: 10.7863/ultra.15.08023), will be illustrated. Recent publications focusing on the design and validation of lung mimicking phantoms (DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-13078-9, 10.1121/10.0001797, 10.1121/10.0007482) will be reviewed in the light of this theory. Moreover, its relevance to the monitoring and diagnosis of lung diseases by means of quantitative lung ultrasound spectroscopy will be discussed. To this end, results obtained within published (DOI: 10.1109/TUFFC.2020.3012289, 10.1121/10.0001723) and ongoing multicenter clinical studies, performed with dedicated multi-frequency imaging modalities implemented on open research scanners, will be presented and looked at through the lens of this theory.