Theoretical evaluation of moderately focused spherical transducers and multi-focus acoustic lens/transducer systems for ultrasound thermal therapy

Impractically long treatment times are required for highly focused spherical transducers to destroy large tumours because thermal lesions generated by these transducers are small and a large number of such lesions are required. Moderately focused spherical transducers and multi-focus acoustic lens/transducer systems can generate larger thermal lesions compared to those produced by highly focused spherical transducers, and therefore shorter treatment times can be expected. The decrease in total treatment time by the use of moderately focused spherical transducers and acoustic lens/transducer systems was quantified in this study. A 3D ultrasound thermal model was developed to predict thermal lesion volumes generated by ultrasound transducers. A target model was constructed in order to compare various transducer designs under identical treatment conditions and with identical treatment goals. A design method was developed to determine the thickness of lens elements for production of specified multi-focus fields. Then, a highly focused and a moderately focused spherical transducer, and an acoustic lens/transducer system were compared in terms of total time required to treat a tumour. These transducers had identical apertures and operating frequencies. The radius of curvature of the moderately focused spherical transducer was chosen such that the length of thermal lesions it generated over 10 s single exposures was slightly greater than that of the target. The lens/transducer system was designed to produce a 9 focus field. The simulation results show that for the treatment of a 2 x 2 x 2 cm(3) tumour at a depth of 5 cm in the body, the highly focused spherical transducer, the moderately focused spherical transducer and the lens/transducer system required 150, 42 and 30 min, respectively.