CONTROL OF THE NECROSED TISSUE VOLUME DURING NONINVASIVE ULTRASOUND SURGERY USING A 16-ELEMENT PHASED-ARRAY

Focused high-power ultrasound beams are well suited for noninvasive local destruction of deep target volumes. In order to avoid cavitation and to utilize only thermal tissue damage, high frequencies (1–5 MHz) are used in ultrasonic surgery. However, the focal spots generated by sharply focused transducers become so small that only small tumors can be treated in a reasonable time. Phased array ultrasound transducers can be employed to electronically scan a focal spot or to produce multiple foci in the desired region to increase the treated volume. In this article, theoretical and experimental studies of spherically curved square-element phased arrays for use in ultrasonic surgery were performed. The simulation results were compared with experimental results from a 16-element array. It was shown that the phased array could control the necrosed tissue volume by using closely spaced multiple foci. The phased array can also be used to enlarge a necrosed tissue volume in only one direction at a time, i.e., lateral or longitudinal. The spherically curved 16 square-element phased array can produce useful results by varying the phase and amplitude setting. Four focal points can be easily generated with a distance of two or four wavelengths between the two closest peaks. The maximum necrosed tissue volume generated by the array can be up to sixteen times the volume induced by a similar spherical transducer. Therefore the treatment time could be reduced compared with single transducer treatment. © 1995, American Association of Physicists in Medicine. All rights reserved.