
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Delivering science and technology to protect our nation and promote world stability
Ultrasound Goes Underground
Ultrafast, ultraclear subterranean imaging
February 1, 2019

A new collimated sound source helps scientists produce images of underground structures.
It’s also much faster, imaging in less than a day what used to take a week.
Ultrasonic imagers use high-frequency sound waves to produce high-resolution images, but they can’t “see” very far. In contrast, imagers operating at lower frequencies can see farther, but they produce only low-resolution images containing limited information. Scientists at Los Alamos have recently invented a new kind of ultrasonic imaging tool that is the best of both worlds, having the penetration power of lower-frequency probes and producing high-quality images like higher-frequency probes.