Efficient driving of piezoelectric materials is desirable when operating transducers for biomedical applications such as high intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) or ultrasound imaging. More efficient operation reduces the electric power required to produce the desired bioeffect or contrast. Our preliminary work [Cole et al. Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter. 2014;26(13):135901.] suggested th...

Background/introduction Breast fibroadenomata (FAD) are the most common breast lesions in woman. For palpable lesions, three options are available: reassurance (with or without follow-up), vacuum assisted mammotome (VAM) or surgical excision. High intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) is a non-invasive ablative technique in which an ultrasound (US) beam propagates through tissue as a high-frequen...

Background/introduction Fibroadenomas are common, benign lesions of the breast. A minority of fibroadenomas will disappear without treatment, but most increase in size or remain unchanged. Current management of patients with fibroadenomas in the United States varies on a case by case basis and includes observation or surgical excision. Many patients find their fibroadenoma bothersome, and opt f...

Introduction A challenge for High Intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU) therapy in the upper abdomen is maintaining the ultrasound focal spot on the target during free breathing. Normal breathing can cause liver tissue to move by as much as 5.5 cm[1]. Consequently, current approaches require the patient to hold their breath during the deposition of focused ultrasound[2]. This practice assumes tha...

Pulmonary vein isolation (PVI) using radiofrequency current (RFC) ablation is a potentially curative treatment option for patients with atrial fibrillation (AF). The shortcomings of the RFC technology (technically challenging, long procedure times, complications) steadily kindle the interest in new energy sources and catheter designs. High intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) has the ability to ...

Background/introduction Treatment duration as well as time spent on patient positioning imposes limitations on therapeutic use of MRguided High Intensity Focused Ultrasound (MR-HIFU). Reduction of overall treatment time is especially important in potential pediatric applications and in other cases where general anesthesia must be used, due to the risks associated with prolonged anesthesia. Typi...

During application of high intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) with therapy arrays, the existence of grating lobes can cause heating at unintended tissue regions. Therefore, the reduction of grating lobes in therapeutic arrays is an important goal. One way to reduce the grating lobes in therapy arrays is to excite the arrays with broadband signals (defined here as >10% fractional bandwidth). To...

Prostate cancer (PC) is one of the most frequently diagnosed cancers in men. There are a number of treatment options for PC with a different therapeutic approach between USA and Europe. Radical prostatectomy is one of the most used therapies but focal gland therapy is an emerging approach, especially for localized tumors. In this scenario, high intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) has been incor...

Laser-enhanced thrombolysis by high intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) treatment was studied in vitro with bovine blood clots. To achieve laser-enhanced thrombolysis, laser light was employed to illuminate the sample concurrently with HIFU radiation, and ultrasound and laser parameters were optimized to achieve better thrombolysis efficiency. The results indicated that the thrombolysis efficie...

Randomized phased arrays can offer electronic steering of a single focus and simultaneous multiple foci concomitant with low levels of secondary maxima and are potentially useful as sources of high intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU). This work describes laboratory testing of a 1 MHz random phased array consisting of 254 elements on a spherical shell of radius of curvature 130 mm and diameter 1...