Generation of very high pressure pulses with 1-bit time reversal in a solid waveguide

The use of piezoelectric transducer arrays has opened up the possibility of electronic steering and focusing of acoustic beams to track kidney stones. However, owing to the limited pressure delivered by each transducer (typically 10 bar), the number of transducers needed to reach an amplitude at the focus on the order of 1000 bars is typically of some hundreds of elements. We present here a new solution based on 1-bit time reversal in a solid waveguide to obtain, with a small number of transducers, a very high amplitude pulse in tissues located in front of the waveguide. The idea is to take advantage of the temporal dispersion in the waveguide to create, after time reversal, a temporally recompressed pulse with a stronger amplitude. The aim of this work is threefold: first, we experimentally demonstrate 1-bit time reversal between a point source in water and several transducers fastened to one section of a finite-length cylindrical waveguide. Second, we numerically and experimentally study the temporal and spatial focusing at the source as a function of the characteristics of the "solid waveguide-time reversal mirror (TRM)" system: length and diameter of the guide, number of transducers of the TRM. Last, we show that the instantaneous power delivered in water at the focus of the solid waveguide is much higher than the power directly transmitted into water from a classically focused transducer. The combination of 1-bit time reversal and a solid waveguide leads to shock wave lithotripsy with low-power electronics. (C) 2001 Acoustical Society of America.