Acoustic Distortion Research Articles

Multi-modal networks for real-time monitoring of intracranial acoustic field during transcranial focused ultrasound therapy

Background and objective:Transcranial focused ultrasound (tFUS) is an emerging non-invasive therapeutic technology that offers new brain stimulation modality. Precise localization of the acoustic focus to the desired brain target throughout the procedure is needed to ensure the safety and effectiveness of the treatment, but acoustic distortion caused by the skull poses a challenge. Although computational methods can provide the estimated location and shape of the focus, the computation has not reached sufficient speed for real-time inference, which is demanded in real-world clinical situations. Leveraging the advantages of deep learning, we propose multi-modal networks capable of generating intracranial pressure map in real-time. Methods:The dataset consisted of free-field pressure maps, intracranial pressure maps, medical images, and transducer placements was obtained from 11 human subjects. The free-field and intracranial pressure maps were computed using the k-space method. We developed network models based on convolutional neural networks and the Swin Transformer, featuring a multi-modal encoder and a decoder. Results:Evaluations on foreseen data achieved high focal volume conformity of approximately 93% for both computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance (MR) data. For unforeseen data, the networks achieved the focal volume conformity of 88% for CT and 82% for MR. The inference time of the proposed networks was under 0.02 s, indicating the feasibility for real-time simulation. Conclusions:The results indicate that our networks can effectively and precisely perform real-time simulation of the intracranial pressure map during tFUS applications. Our work will enhance the safety and accuracy of treatments, representing significant progress for low-intensity focused ultrasound (LIFU) therapies.

Effects of Tympanic Membrane Electrodes on Sound Transmission From the Ear Canal to the Middle and Inner Ears.

The first objective of the study was to compare approaches to eardrum electrode insertion as they relate to the likelihood of introducing an acoustic leak between the ear canal and eartip. A common method for placing a tympanic membrane electrode involves securing the electrode in the canal by routing it underneath a foam eartip. This method is hypothesized to result in a slit leak between the canal and foam tip due to the added bulk of the electrode wire. An alternative approach involves creating a bore in the wall of the foam tip that the electrode can be threaded through. This method is hypothesized to reduce the likelihood of a slit leak before the electrode wire is integrated into the foam tip. The second objective of the study was to investigate how sound transmission in the ear is affected by placing an electrode on the eardrum. It was hypothesized that an electrode in contact with the eardrum increases the eardrum's mass, with the potential to reduce sound transmission at high frequencies. Wideband acoustic immittance and distortion product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAEs) were measured in eight human ears. Measurements were completed for five different conditions: (1) baseline with no electrode in the canal, (2) dry electrode in the canal but not touching the eardrum, secured underneath the eartip, (3) dry electrode in the canal not touching the eardrum, secured through a bore in the eartip (subsequent conditions were completed using this method), (4) hydrated electrode in the canal but not touching the eardrum, and (5) hydrated electrode touching the eardrum. To create the bore, a technique was developed in which a needle is heated and pushed through the foam eartip. The electrode is then thread through the bore and advanced slowly by hand until contacting the eardrum. Analysis included comparing absorbance, admittance phase angle, and DPOAE levels between measurement conditions. Comparison of the absorbance and admittance phase angle measurements between the electrode placement methods revealed significantly higher absorbance and lower admittance phase angle from 0.125 to 1 kHz when the electrode is routed under the eartip. Absorbance and admittance phase angle were minimally affected when the electrode was inserted through a bore in the eartip. DPOAE levels across the different conditions showed changes approximating test-retest variability. Upon contacting the eardrum, the absorbance tended to decrease below 1 kHz and increase above 1 kHz. However, changes were within the range of test-retest variability. There was evidence of reduced levels below 1 kHz and increased levels above 1 kHz upon the electrode contacting the eardrum. However, differences between conditions approximated test-retest variability. Routing the eardrum electrode through the foam tip reduces the likelihood of incurring an acoustic leak between the canal walls and eartip, compared with routing the electrode under the eartip. Changes in absorbance and DPOAE levels resulting from electrode contact with the eardrum implicate potential stiffening of eardrum; however, the magnitude of changes suggests minimal effect of the electrode on sound transmission in the ear.

Quantitative identification of causes of instrumental acoustic signal distortion in Global Navigation Satellite System-Acoustics Combination observations.

The Seafloor Geodetic Observation-Array (SGO-A), operated by the Japan Coast Guard, relies on the Global Navigation Satellite System-Acoustics combination (GNSS-A) technique, which integrates satellite positioning systems and undersea acoustic ranging to determine seafloor crustal deformation at the centimeter level for earthquake disaster prevention. Recently, we found distortion in the SGO-A 10-kHz carrier wave that degraded the accuracy. Carrier wave distortion can cause errors on the scale of several centimeters to twenty centimeters, which greatly impedes centimeter-level observations. This study investigated this carrier wave degradation by an underwater acoustic communication experiment conducted in 2022, using a transducer similar to that used by SGO-A. Also, we reproduced degraded waveforms through a grid search-like method for quantitatively evaluating the extent to which the interior of the equipment contributed to deterioration. Our results underscore the importance of careful consideration in signal processing, as the observed waveform degradation is not solely attributed to hardware structures but also to internal electrical circuits. The findings suggest that conventional signal identification methods may lead to errors, providing motivation for a shift towards experimental and experiential timing-based waveform identification approaches to enhance accuracy in GNSS-A systems.

Non-destructive evaluation of corrosion in steel liner plates embedded in concrete using nonlinear ultrasonics

Nuclear containment structures employ a leak-tight steel liner to avoid any unwanted particle release into the exterior environment. The steel liner can be embedded in concrete which creates large continuous areas where the steel plate is in direct contact with surrounding concrete. The impact of the aging of concrete structures due to the presence of structural discontinuities, such as the presence of foreign matter and a delamination gap at the embedded steel–concrete interface, is investigated for small laboratory-scale specimens manufactured with a novel inlay technique by nonlinear ultrasonic evaluation. A Total Damage Index (TDI) which combines several parameters related to acoustic wave distortion into a single damage index to rank the specimens is introduced. The findings in this work indicate that severe corrosion, the presence of foreign matter, and delamination gap in the steel–concrete interface can be detected using nonlinear ultrasonic techniques based on higher-harmonic analysis and modulation intensity using continuous ultrasonic probe excitation and an impactor to modulate the signal. The results obtained using the TDI are consistent with attenuation, a conventional parameter used in corrosion detection.

Cortical networks for recognition of speech with simultaneous talkers

The relative contributions of superior temporal vs. inferior frontal and parietal networks to recognition of speech in a background of competing speech remain unclear, although the contributions themselves are well established. Here, we use fMRI with spectrotemporal modulation transfer function (ST-MTF) modeling to examine the speech information represented in temporal vs. frontoparietal networks for two speech recognition tasks with and without a competing talker. Specifically, 31 listeners completed two versions of a three-alternative forced choice competing speech task: “Unison” and “Competing”, in which a female (target) and a male (competing) talker uttered identical or different phrases, respectively. Spectrotemporal modulation filtering (i.e., acoustic distortion) was applied to the two-talker mixtures and ST-MTF models were generated to predict brain activation from differences in spectrotemporal-modulation distortion on each trial. Three cortical networks were identified based on differential patterns of ST-MTF predictions and the resultant ST-MTF weights across conditions (Unison, Competing): a bilateral superior temporal (S-T) network, a frontoparietal (F-P) network, and a network distributed across cortical midline regions and the angular gyrus (M-AG). The S-T network and the M-AG network responded primarily to spectrotemporal cues associated with speech intelligibility, regardless of condition, but the S-T network responded to a greater range of temporal modulations suggesting a more acoustically driven response. The F-P network responded to the absence of intelligibility-related cues in both conditions, but also to the absence (presence) of target-talker (competing-talker) vocal pitch in the Competing condition, suggesting a generalized response to signal degradation. Task performance was best predicted by activation in the S-T and F-P networks, but in opposite directions (S-T: more activation = better performance; F-P: vice versa). Moreover, S-T network predictions were entirely ST-MTF mediated while F-P network predictions were ST-MTF mediated only in the Unison condition, suggesting an influence from non-acoustic sources (e.g., informational masking) in the Competing condition. Activation in the M-AG network was weakly positively correlated with performance and this relation was entirely superseded by those in the S-T and F-P networks. Regarding contributions to speech recognition, we conclude: (a) superior temporal regions play a bottom-up, perceptual role that is not qualitatively dependent on the presence of competing speech; (b) frontoparietal regions play a top-down role that is modulated by competing speech and scales with listening effort; and (c) performance ultimately relies on dynamic interactions between these networks, with ancillary contributions from networks not involved in speech processing per se (e.g., the M-AG network).

Insights into perceived listening difficulties post COVID-19 infection: no measurable hearing difficulty on clinical tests despite increased self-reported listening effort.

The aim was to use a battery of clinic-based auditory assessment procedures to compare participants with and without self-reported hearing difficulties following a confirmed COVID-19 infection. A further aim was to compare the groups on self-reported measures of listening effort and fatigue. There were 25 participants in each group (age range 20-59 years, 80% females). Participants were recruited after a minimum of 4 weeks of testing positive. Hearing assessment involved tympanometry, acoustic reflex thresholds, pure-tone audiometry (PTA; 0.25-14 kHz), and distortion product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAEs; 0.5-10 kHz). Listening effort was assessed using the Arabic version of the Effort Assessment Scale (EAS-A) and fatigue was assessed using the Arabic version of the Fatigue Assessment Scale (FAS-A). There was no difference between groups on any measure except for greater self-reported listening effort in the perceived hearing difficulty group (p = 0.01). The only difference between groups was self-reported listening effort. This could be due to a subclinical auditory deficit following COVID-19, increased listening effort due to the impact of COVID-19 on cognitive processes, or a psychosomatic response/health anxiety.

Impact of clear face masks on audiovisual speech intelligibility and subjective listening effort with normal hearing young adults

During the COVID-19 pandemic, facemask use made people suddenly aware of the importance of both visual information and acoustic clarity in speech perception. Masks with transparent panels can provide listeners with visual speech information, but such masks tend to introduce more acoustic distortion than other opaque masks. Thus, their value for improving speech recognition (at least for listeners with normal hearing) is not clear. In the current study we investigated the ability of three different clear face masks to improve speech intelligibility relative to an opaque surgical mask. Normal hearing young adult participants (N = 180) were presented with audiovisual recordings of 150 sentences from a female speaker in 5 different mask conditions (no mask, surgical mask, and three different clear masks) and at three different signal-to-noise ratios (no noise, –5 dB SNR, and −9 dB SNR). After each condition, participants also completed the NASA-TLX survey for subjective effort. Participants also completed an independent lipreading task. Preliminary data suggest decreased subjective effort and improved performance of the clear masks relative to the opaque mask at high SNR. This implies a potential for visual information to make up for decreased acoustic clarity, making clear masks a better choice in difficult listening conditions.

Non-invasive photoacoustic computed tomography of rat heart anatomy and function

Complementary to mainstream cardiac imaging modalities for preclinical research, photoacoustic computed tomography (PACT) can provide functional optical contrast with high imaging speed and resolution. However, PACT has not been demonstrated to reveal the dynamics of whole cardiac anatomy or vascular system without surgical procedure (thoracotomy) for tissue penetration. Here, we achieved non-invasive imaging of rat hearts using the recently developed three-dimensional PACT (3D-PACT) platform, demonstrating the regulated illumination and detection schemes to reduce the effects of optical attenuation and acoustic distortion through the chest wall; thereby, enabling unimpeded visualization of the cardiac anatomy and intracardiac hemodynamics following rapidly scanning the heart within 10 s. We further applied 3D-PACT to reveal distinct cardiac structural and functional changes among the healthy, hypertensive, and obese rats, with optical contrast to uncover differences in cardiac chamber size, wall thickness, and hemodynamics. Accordingly, 3D-PACT provides high imaging speed and nonionizing penetration to capture the whole heart for diagnosing the animal models, holding promises for clinical translation to cardiac imaging of human neonates.

Multi-objective optimization for generation of personal sound zone.

Personal Sound Zone (PSZ) allows listeners to enjoy their individual sound without being disturbed by sound from other zones. Acoustic contrast, signal distortion, and array effort are the most frequently used metrics for measuring the performance of a PSZ system. However, usually, the three metrics cannot be optimized at the same time. A trade-off between the three metrics has to be made when designing a PSZ system. In this paper, two generalized methods based on multi-objective optimization are proposed for dealing with all possible trade-off problems between the three metrics in PSZ. Optimality analysis of the two proposed methods is taken, and the relationship between the two proposed methods is investigated. Numerical simulations are presented to validate the efficacy and flexibility of the two proposed methods.

Design and Fabrication of an Integrated Hollow Concave Cilium MEMS Cardiac Sound Sensor.

In light of a need for low-frequency, high sensitivity and broadband cardiac murmur signal detection, the present work puts forward an integrated MEMS-based heart sound sensor with a hollow concave ciliary micro-structure. The advantages of a hollow MEMS structure, in contrast to planar ciliated micro-structures, are that it reduces the ciliated mass and enhances the operating bandwidth. Meanwhile, the area of acoustic-wave reception is enlarged by the concave architecture, thereby enhancing the sensitivity at low frequencies. By rationally designing the acoustic encapsulation, the loss of heart acoustic distortion and weak cardiac murmurs is reduced. As demonstrated by experimentation, the proposed hollow MEMS structure cardiac sound sensor has a sensitivity of up to -206.9 dB at 200 Hz, showing 6.5 dB and 170 Hz increases in the sensitivity and operating bandwidth, respectively, in contrast to the planar ciliated MEMS sensor. The SNR of the sensor is 26.471 dB, showing good detectability for cardiac sounds.

The Effect of Microchannel Cavity on the Bulk Acoustic Wave-Induced Acoustofluidics: Numerical Investigation

Acoustofluidics is emerging as an effective approach to manipulating microparticles and cells no matter their optical, electrical, and magnetic properties and no requirement of pre-processing. Standing field in a microfluidic channel produced by a bulk acoustic wave (BAW) could accumulate the microparticles at the plane of the pressure node. In order to further accumulate them from a plane (2D) to a line (1D), a new strategy without significant change of the systematic setup (i.e., adding another orthogonal standing field) was proposed and evaluated numerically in a full-sized model. Concave cavity on the conventional rectangular microchannel leads to a slight increase of the maximum acoustic pressure and distortion of the wavefront, but two more vortexes close to the edge of the bottom cavity and directional acoustic radiation forces in the middle line of the microchannel (the upper part pointing downwards while the lower part upwards). Subsequently, most of the microparticles are accumulated in a very small region in the middle line of the microchannel. The effect of the cavity geometry on such a novel phenomenon was investigated. With the increase of the diameter of the cavity from 170 μm to 260 μm, the resonant frequency of the microchannel, the maximum acoustic pressure, and the maximum acoustic streaming velocity increased by 13%, 78%, and 7.1 fold, respectively. When shifting the center of the cavity, the position of 1D accumulated microparticles could be changed correspondingly. In summary, the characteristics of acoustofluidics are highly dependent on the microchannel geometry. Microparticle accumulation with a significant reduction to one dimension using only one acoustic standing field is theoretically possible by introducing an appropriate concave cavity in the conventional rectangular microchannel.

Imaging of Artificial Bubble Distribution Using a Multi-Sonar Array System

Bubble clusters present in seawater can cause acoustic interference and acoustic signal distortion during marine exploration. However, this interference can also be used as an acoustic masking technique, which has significant implications for military purposes. Therefore, characterizing the distribution of bubble clusters in water would allow for the development of anti-detection technologies. In this study, a sea experiment was performed using a multi-sonar array system and a bubble-generating material developed by our research group to obtain acoustic signals from an artificial bubble cluster and characterize its distribution. The acquired acoustic data were preprocessed, and reverse-time migration (RTM) was applied to the dataset. For effective RTM, an envelope waveform was used to decrease computation time and memory requirements. The envelope RTM results could be used to effectively image the distribution characteristics of the artificial bubble clusters. Compared with acoustic Doppler current profiler data, the backscattering strength of the boundary of the imaged artificial bubble cluster was estimated to range between −30 and −20 dB. Therefore, the three-dimensional distribution characteristics of bubble clusters in the open sea can be effectively determined through envelope RTM. Furthermore, the data obtained from this study can be used as a reference for future studies.

Canonical correlation analysis as a feature extraction method to classify active sonar targets with shallow neural networks.

Sonar target recognition remains an active area of research due to the complex entanglement of features from various acoustic scatterers, background clutter, and distortion by waveguide propagation effects. An equally challenging issue is due to different acoustic echoes returned from the target (including different target elements) itself. This work investigates the sonar target classification problem from a statistical perspective and aims to extract salient target feature vectors. Specifically, a multivariate statistical method is employed, canonical correlation analysis (CCA), as a feature extraction technique prior to multi-class classification of active sonar field data. The intuition behind using CCA is that persistent features slowly morph over time due to the changing aspect angles and platform positions and can be represented by maximally correlated projections of consecutive pings. CCA is applied using a sliding window, and the projections are used as feature vectors to train a neural network classifier. The smallest increase in classification accuracy when comparing the projection feature vectors to unprocessed feature vectors was 10%. The largest increase was 34%. The results are further examined through the use of confusion matrices and layer-wise relevance propagation, which distributes the trained networks output score to the input layer.

Wave acoustic solutions in small rooms

This presentation will discuss the growing application of wave based solutions due to the increased processing power of desktop and distributed cloud cluster computing. The causes and mitigation of four types of potential acoustical distortion in small rooms, below and above 200 Hz, will be presented. Below 200 Hz, approaches to minimize modal effects and the speaker boundary interference response will be presented. We will discuss limitations of traditional dimensional ratio determinations, more accurate wave-based predictions, importance of speaker and listener locations, and prediction and measurement of low frequency absorption devices. Above 200 Hz, comb filtering from strong specular reflections and poor diffusion are potential problems. We will describe the necessary ratio of surface width to incident wavelength for a specular reflection and its effect on comb filtering. Finally, we describe the importance of creating a mixing room design and the use of broad bandwidth diffusive surfaces, which can be both measured and simulated with a virtual goniometer boundary element program called VIRGO, from a 3D CAD file topology of any shape. This offers the acoustician the ability to evaluate surface topologies that are of interest in a room design quickly and inexpensively.

Effects of human tissue acoustic properties, abdominal wall shape, and respiratory motion on ultrasound-mediated hyperthermia for targeted drug delivery to pancreatic tumors

Background PanDox is a Phase-1 trial of chemotherapeutic drug delivery to pancreatic tumors using ultrasound-mediated hyperthermia to release doxorubicin from thermally sensitive liposomes. This report describes trial-related hyperthermia simulations featuring: (i) new ultrasonic properties of human pancreatic tissues, (ii) abdomen deflections imposed by a water balloon, and (iii) respiration-driven organ motion. Methods Pancreas heating simulations were carried out using three patient body models. Pancreas acoustic properties were varied between values found in the literature and those determined from our human tissue study. Acoustic beam distortion was assessed with and without balloon-induced abdomen deformation. Target heating was assessed for static, normal respiratory, and jet-ventilation-controlled pancreas motion. Results Human pancreatic tumor attenuation is 63% of the literature values, so that pancreas treatments require commensurately higher input intensity to achieve adequate hyperthermia. Abdominal wall deformation decreased the peak field pressure by as much as 3.5 dB and refracted the focal spot by as much as 4.5 mm. These effects were thermally counteracted by sidelobe power deposition, so the net impact on achieving mild hyperthermia was small. Respiratory motion during moving beam hyperthermia produced localized regions overheated by more than 8.0 °C above the 4.0 °C volumetric goal. The use of jet ventilation reduced this excess to 0.7 °C and yielded temperature field uniformity that was nearly identical to having no respiratory motion. Conclusion Realistic modeling of the ultrasonic propagation environment is critical to achieving adequate mild hyperthermia without the use of real time thermometry for targeted drug delivery in pancreatic cancer patients.

Snapshot time-reversed ultrasonically encoded optical focusing guided by time-reversed photoacoustic wave

Deep-tissue optical imaging is a longstanding challenge limited by scattering. Both optical imaging and treatment can benefit from focusing light in deep tissue beyond one transport mean free path. Wavefront shaping based on time-reversed ultrasonically encoded (TRUE) optical focusing utilizes ultrasound focus, which is much less scattered than light in biological tissues as the 'guide star'. However, the traditional TRUE is limited by the ultrasound focusing area and pressure tagging efficiency, especially in acoustically heterogeneous medium. Even the improved version of iterative TRUE comes at a large time consumption, which limits the application of TRUE. To address this problem, we proposed a method called time-reversed photoacoustic wave guided time-reversed ultrasonically encoded (TRPA-TRUE) optical focusing by integrating accurate ultrasonic focusing through acoustically heterogeneous medium guided by time-reversing PA signals, and the ultrasound modulation of diffused coherent light with optical phase conjugation (OPC), achieving dynamic focusing of light into scattering medium. Simulation results show that the focusing accuracy of the proposed method has been significantly improved compared with conventional TRUE, which is more suitable for practical applications that suffers severe acoustic distortion, e.g. transcranial optical focusing.

Experimental Low-Speed Performance Evaluation and Comparison of Sensorless Passive Algorithms for SPMSM

Sensorless algorithms for PMSM have achieved an increasing interest in the technical literature. They can be divided into active methods and passive methods. Active methods exploit rotor anisotropy by injecting high voltage frequency signals, whereas passive methods are based on observers. Even if passive methods do not have the drawbacks of active methods – acoustic noise, torque ripple and harmonic distortion - their effectiveness is reduced in the low speed region. For this reason, active methods are usually used at low speed and the motor control switches to passive methods in the high-speed region. Since high frequency injection is associated to many drawbacks, the aim of passive methods is to work at lower speed as possible or, ideally, to be able to start directly the motor. That is particularly true for Surface-Mounted PMSM: since they have a low anisotropy, high frequency injection should be particularly elevate to achieve sufficient signal-to-noise ratio. It is difficult to compare the performance of passive algorithms proposed in the technical literature since experimental tests have been done with different conditions: motors, inverter features, measurements, type of tests, etc. In this paper, five different sensorless passive algorithms for Surface-Mounted PMSM, selected among the most promising algorithms available in the technical literature, are compared, performing the same tests on the same experimental setup, to achieve a fair comparison and establishing the most performing one.

Outer hair cell driven reticular lamina mechanical distortion in living cochleae

Cochlear distortions afford researchers and clinicians a glimpse into the conditions and properties of inner ear signal processing mechanisms. Until recently, our examination of these distortions has been limited to measuring the vibration of the basilar membrane or recording acoustic distortion output in the ear canal. Despite its importance, the generation mechanism of cochlear distortion remains a substantial task to understand. The ability to measure the vibration of the reticular lamina in rodent models is a recent experimental advance. Surprising mechanical properties have been revealed. These properties merit both discussion in context with our current understanding of distortion, and appraisal of the significance of new interpretations of cochlear mechanics. This review focusses on some of the recent data from our research groups and discusses the implications of these data on our understanding of vocalization processing in the periphery, and their influence upon future experimental directions.This article is part of the Special Issue Outer hair cell Edited by Joseph Santos-Sacchi and Kumar Navaratnam

Nonlinear stereophonic acoustic echo cancellation using sub-filter based adaptive algorithm

The nonlinear echo path resulting from the unwarranted acoustic echo and nonlinear distortion will degrade the echo cancellation performance of a stereophonic acoustic echo cancellation system. Techniques proposed in the literature rely on the assumption of a linear echo path. In this paper, a nonlinear stereophonic acoustic echo cancellation framework is proposed to address the problem of nonlinear distortion in stereophonic acoustic cancellation systems with a better trade-off between convergence and steady-state performance. The proposed approach uses the functional link-based adaptive filtering to deal with the nonlinear distortion in combination with the sub-filter approach to enhance the convergence performance. In addition to that, the convergence analysis of the proposed algorithm is presented in this paper. Simulations carried out using echo return loss enhancement and magnitude squared coherence as performance metrics using speech and colored noise input demonstrate the proposed framework's ability to improve the echo cancellation performance in the presence of distortion.

A Comparative Study for Evaluating Passive Shielding of MRI Longitudinal Gradient Coil.

Gradient coils are vital for Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). Their rapid switching generates eddy currents in the surrounding metallic structures of the MRI scanner causing undesirable thermal, acoustic, and field distortion effects. The use of actively shielded gradient coils does not eliminate such undesirable effects totally. Use of passive shielding was proposed lately to particularly help in mitigating eddy currents and loud acoustic noise. Numerical computations are necessary for calculating eddy currents and evaluating the efficacy of passive shielding. Harmonic and temporal eddy current analysis caused by gradient coil(s) using network analysis (NA) can be faster and more flexible than the traditional FDTD and FEM methods. NA was used more than a decade ago but was limited to analyzing eddy currents resulting from z-gradient coils of separated turns. NA with stream function was recently modified resulting in the more general Multilayer Integral Method (MIM) for simulation of eddy currents in thin structures of arbitrary geometries. In this work, we compared the performance of the NA method and an adapted MIM method to analyze eddy current in both the passive shielding and cryostat to the Ansys Maxwell 3D analysis thus evaluating the performance of gradient configurations with and without passive shielding. Both an unconnected and a connected z-gradient coil configuration were used. Our analysis showed high agreement in the profiles of eddy ohmic losses in metallic structures using the three methods. The NA method is the most computationally efficient however, it is limited to specific symmetries unlike the more general MIM and Ansys methods. Our implementation of the adapted MIM method showed computational efficiency relative to Ansys with comparable values. We have developed a computationally efficient eddy current analysis framework that can be used to evaluate more designs for passive shielding using different configurations of MRI gradient coils.