Can ultrasound detect thoracic aneurysms?

Can ultrasound detect thoracic aortic aneurysms? Ultrasound is used widely to detect infernal aneurysms. The reason why it's so useful for doing that is that ultrasound works best when it has an unimpeded view of an object such as the aorta. The problem with the chest is there are ribs in the way and there's the lungs, which mean that you get a much less clear image of the thoracic aorta. My previous research group did some work on this and at the moment we have done a pilot study which suggests that ultrasounds may be able to detect thoracic aortic aneurysms, however it still requires a bit of work and probably a larger trial. Sometimes when the cardiologists are looking at the heart they might incidentally detect a thoracic aneurysm but at the moment the mainstay of screening for thoracic aortic aneurysms is CT scanning and I can't see that that changing for the next couple of years really.