Impact of cavitation on lesion formation induced by high intensity focused ultrasound

High intensity focused ultrasound（HIFU） has shown a great promise in noninvasive cancer therapy. The impact of acoustic cavitation on the lesion formation induced by HIFU is investigated both experimentally and theoretically in transparent protein-containing gel and ex vivo liver tissue samples. A numerical model that accounts for nonlinear acoustic propagation and heat transfer is used to simulate the lesion formation induced by the thermal effect. The results showed that lesions could be induced in the samples exposed to HIFU with various acoustic pressures and pulse lengths. The measured areas of lesions formed in the lateral direction were comparable to the simulated results, while much larger discrepancy was observed between the experimental and simulated data for the areas of longitudinal lesion cross-section. Meanwhile,a series of stripe-wiped-off B-mode pictures were obtained by using a special imaging processing method so that HIFUinduced cavitation bubble activities could be monitored in real-time and quantitatively analyzed as the functions of acoustic pressure and pulse length. The results indicated that, unlike the lateral area of HIFU-induced lesion that was less affected by the cavitation activity, the longitudinal cross-section of HIFU-induced lesion was significantly influenced by the generation of cavitation bubbles through the temperature elevation resulting from HIFU exposures. Therefore, considering the clinical safety in HIFU treatments, more attention should be paid on the lesion formation in the longitudinal direction to avoid uncontrollable variation resulting from HIFU-induced cavitation activity.

Analysis of Cavitation Performance of a 2-D Hydrofoil Based on Mixed-iterative Method

In order to study cavitation characteristics of a 2-D hydrofoil, the method that combines nonlinear cavitation model and mixed-iteration is used to predict and analyze the cavitation performance of hydrofoils. The cavitation elements are nonlinearly disposed based on the Green formula and perturbation potential panel method. At the same time, the method that combines cavity shape for fixed cavity length （CSCL） iteration and cavity shape for fixed cavitation number （CSCN） iteration is used to work out the thickness and length of hydrofoil cavitations. Through analysis of calculation results, it can be concluded that the jump of pressure and velocity potentially exist between cavitation end area and non-cavitations area on suction surface when cavitation occurs on hydrofoil. In certain angles of attack, the cavitation number has a negative impact on the length of cavitations. And under the same angle of attack and cavitation number, the bigger the thickness of the hydrofoil, the shorter the cavitations length.