The role of nonlinear ultrasound propagation during hyperthermia treatments.

In this study the feasibility of utilizing nonlinear ultrasound propagation to control the power deposition patterns during ultrasound hyperthermia treatments of malignant tumors was investigated. From the in vivo results it appears that the power deposition pattern and the temperature distributions can be significantly altered by increasing the temporal peak power of the source while reducing the duty cycle to maintain the same acoustic time average power. The maximum temperature gains obtained during hyperthermia sonication (between 1.5 and 2) were significantly less than one could obtain by varying the frequency and the other parameters of transducers and thus, the linear characteristics of the ultrasound fields should be used when hyperthermia systems are designed and treatments are planned. Then during the treatment nonlinear propagation can be used to provide on-line control of the power deposition patterns. The transducer characteristics determined the magnitude of the temperature gain and the nonlinear propagation region could not be reached when sharply focused (F number = 1) transducers were used at the frequencies between 0.25 to 1.68 MHz due to the high pressure amplitudes that exceeded the transient cavitation threshold.