Visualization of HIFU-induced lesions with thermoacoustic tomography

Abstract

High-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) has proved to be an effective minimally invasive surgical technology. In this study, we focus on the visualization of HIFU-induced lesions using microwave-induced thermoacoustic tomography (TAT). TAT has high spatial resolution, comparable with ultrasound imaging, and high contrast, which is induced by differences in the microwave absorption rates between tumor tissue and normal tissue. TAT can, in addition, differentiate tumors before and after treatment. A single, spherically focused transducer operating at a center frequency of approximately 4 MHZ was used to generate the focused field. The lesion was generated in porcine muscle. A local-tomography-type reconstruction algorithm was applied to reconstruct the TAT image of the lesions. The lesion shown by gross pathology confirms the corresponding region measured by TAT.

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