Noninvasive treatment efficacy monitoring and dose control for high-intensity focused ultrasound therapy using relative electrical impedance variation

As an effective therapeutic modality, high-intensity focused ultrasound（HIFU） can destroy tumour tissues by thermocoagulation with less metastasis, but it is still limited by inaccurate non-invasive temperature monitoring and efficacy evaluation. A model of electrical impedance measurement during HIFU therapy was established using the temperatureimpedance relationship. Based on the simulations of acoustic pressure, temperature, and electrical conductivity, the impedance of the phantom was calculated and experimentally demonstrated for different values of acoustic power values and treatment time. We proved that the relative impedance variation（RIV） increases linearly with the increasing treatment time at a fixed acoustic power, and the relative impedance variation rate shows a linear relationship with the acoustic power.The RIV and treatment time required for HIFU treatment efficacy are inversely proportional to the acoustic power and the square of acoustic power, respectively. The favourable results suggest that RIV can be used as an efficient indicator for noninvasive temperature monitoring and efficacy evaluation and may provide new strategy for accurate dose control of HIFU therapy.

Using the system function to analyze the performance of transducer's impedance measurement method

Prom investigation of the advantages and disadvantages of conventional tri-voltage method,a method for the measurement of the transmitting transducer＇s impedance was presented to solve the difficult problem of examining the consistency of the transmitting phased array on the single-mode excitation sea spot.In the method based on the system function, the circuit structure of tri-voltage method was used but new parameters were measured.The principle of the method was given first.Then when resistors with different nominal values were used in the circuit,the measured results for the impedance of transducers were reported.The results were compared with the higher precision impedance analyzer.Finally,the error analysis was performed according to the impedance formula and the equivalent circuit parameters were fitted.Under the condition of guaranteeing the sampling precision,by performance analyzing, the resistor value in series was chosen relatively smaller than the impedance of transducer,the measurement of impedance could achieve the same precision as the higher precision impedance analyzer.Finally,the least squares curve-fitting of measured curves indicated that the transducer equivalent electrical parameters could be extracted accurately and used to design the matching network.